From Obinna Odogwu, Awka
Accreditation of the eligible delegates who would vote at the ongoing primary election of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has commenced at Prof. Dora Akunyili Women’s Development Centre, Awka.
At the moment, less than 200 out of the about 300 super delegates have filed out for accreditation according to their local government areas of origin.
The Secretary of the Anambra State Gubernatorial Primary Electoral Committee of the PDP and Deputy Governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu, said that the committee was determined to conduct a free, fair and acceptable primary.
Shaibu, while briefing reporters on the situation of things at the venue, disclosed that three aspirants have dropped their ambition and pledged loyalty to the party. The aspirants, according to him, are Dr Tony Nwoye, Emeka Etiaba and another.
‘We just concluded the first round of the accreditation and the second and most important is the one we just started now.
‘What we just did was to get everybody that is a delegate here and left every other person that has no business in here outside.
‘The next stage is for them to go inside and we give them the accreditation tags.
‘What we have so far from the list I just received is less than 200 delegates as against 230 that we have on our list. And for us, that makes more sense than to have over 230. So, we’ll see be starting in a very short while and we will be going local government by the local government inside.
‘We had a little hitch at the beginning because we had to stop every aspirant at the gate and searched everybody. The aspirants were not comfortable with that. But it is just measures we had to put in place for safety and measures for transparency and for everybody to be carried along to make sure that we have a successful primary that would be seemingly said to be free, fair and acceptable by all.
‘I am determined to have a free, fair and credible primary and that is why we engaged ourselves inside to make sure that all the fears of the aspirants are sorted out. At the end of the day, we all agreed to go ahead.
‘Interestingly, three aspirants stepped down and they also pledged loyalty to the party and whoever will emerge as a winner in this primary because for them, they are determined to work with whoever that emerges today to reclaim Government House, Awka,’ he said.