Breaking: Lagos PDP calls for cancellation of Primaries

The Lagos State chapter of the PDP has urged the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) to cancel the House of Assembly and House of Representatives primaries slated for Sunday in Lagos.

The PDP Chairman in Lagos state, Mr Philips Aivoji, addressing a news conference alongside other state executives of the party, governorship aspirants and party leaders in Ikeja, said the ad hoc delegates lists brought by the electoral committees for both primaries had been compromised.

Uncertainty, tension and apprehension trailed the conduct of the primaries as delegates and aspirants waited in various venues in the local government areas for the party’s election officials from it’s national headquarters, who as at the time of filing this report, were yet to be seen at any of the venues across the state.

Aivoji said: “The entire state executive committee of the Lagos state PDP and five of the six Gubernatorial aspirants, reject in its entirety, the Ad-Hoc delegate list brought by the electoral committee to Lagos state for the purpose of conducting the primaries.

“We are all shocked to see that the list do not reflect the authentic elected Ad-Hoc delegates as conducted by organs of the party at Ward level and Supervised by the DSS and INEC.

“It is imperative to state that copies of the Ad-Hoc list that emanated from the state and submitted to INEC is completely different from the one brought by the committee for the purpose of the exercise.

“We realised that contrary to the provision of our great party and the electoral guidelines of the party, the election committee came to the state with list of venues and already chosen electoral officers.”

According to him, this is the responsibility of the state executive committee of the party and therefore, totally unacceptable.

He said the committee Chairman and Secretary of the Election Committee meant to conduct the State House of Assembly Primary election had not reported to the state chairman or state organ of the party.

“Up till this moment, we cannot reach out to the committee chairman and secretary, their telephones have either been switched off or unreachable.

“As law abiding members of our great party, we collectively reject this list and we cannot guarantee, free, fair and credible party primaries that we have sworn to conduct.

“The processes have been compromised ab initio and skewed to favor a particular aspirant.

“We, therefore, call for outright cancellation of the election exercise, doing otherwise will jeopardise the chances of the party at the 2023 polls,” Aivoji said.

The chairman said that if the exercise was allowed to carry on, it would also lead to a plethora of endless litigations afterwards.