Another aspirant rejects Anambra PDP’s guber primary

IN A move that stokes the crisis rocking People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State, another frontline aspirant that participated in the party’s governorship primary has rejected its results.

He is Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, who said the results of the exercise were faulty and questionable.

According to Okonkwo, not only were there discrepancies in the primary with the list used by PDP’s National Working Committee (NWC) changed at will without any explanation, many statutory delegates were also dropped.

“As you know, on Saturday, June 26, 2021, our party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), conducted primary election to pick a candidate for the November 6, 2021 governorship election in Anambra State. We went into the election full of hope and expectation. Our hope was that our party, the PDP, and members of our party will conduct themselves in a manner that will prove that we are ready to do the right thing, devoid of subterfuge.

Our expectation was that the wishes of the people would be allowed to prevail. From the result announced by the committee led by His Excellency, Philip Shaibu, the deputy governor of Edo State, it is obvious that the outcome of that exercise did not reflect our wishes and desires.

Obviously, there were a number of serious issues and irregularities regarding the primary election and in the process disenfranchised its statutory delegates who are the soul of PDP in Anambra state and who have been working.

However, there was a court judgement and order validating the Ndubuisi Nwobu-led executive which the party ought to have upheld and respected as the first in time. The National Working Committee of the party decided, at the last minute, to limit the voting to a small number of super delegates.

Even with that, the list of the super delegates kept changing such that voting was unduly delayed after the first round of accreditation where 179 super delegates had been accredited,” Okonkwo said.

It will be recalled that the party held two parallel primaries on June 26, at different locations where two candidates — Valentine Ozigbo and Ugochukwu Uba – emerged as PDP’s gubernatorial candidates for the Anambra governorship election slated for November 6.