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Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Another group of 37 All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship aspirants have declared total support for the party’s decision to adopt indirect primaries to elect a candidate for the party in the November 16 election.
A group of 20 aspirants had, on Monday, outrightly rejected the indirect primary option adopted by APC’s National Working Committee (NWC), and threatened to work against the re-election of Governor Yahaya Bello.
But, addressing newsmen at the secretariat of the ruling party in Abuja, yesterday, the group of 37 argued that the 20 other aspirants kicking against the indirect mode of primary election are moles of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), bent on throwing the party into chaos.
They, however maintained that although they adopted the same position regarding indirect primary with Bello, they are determine to defeat him at the primary, as, according to them, “he is beatable.”
Convener of the forum and one of the governorship aspirants, Edime Godwin Amade, told newsmen after submitting a letter addressed to the National Executive Committee (NEC) and other organs of the ruling party, that some members of the earlier group against the indirect primary are non-APC members.
He said: “APC Kogi state has grown from less than 100,000 members in 2015 to over 500,000 in 2019. It will take too much time, money and logistics to produce a clean and uncontested membership register between now and August 29, 2019. Even if that impossible feat is achieved, we simply cannot organise trouble-free direct primaries for at least half a million people. Anybody can obtain our party card from anywhere and cause legal trouble.
“In fact, we have proof that, in anticipation of their success in moving the NWC to adopt direct primaries, some of the aspirants who turned up here, last Monday, have started printing hundreds of thousands of APC Kogi membership cards. They are also compiling rival membership registers in a bid to make sure the confusion is complete. We, therefore, state categorically that there are no factions in Kogi APC and no rival claimants to the leadership of it.”
