Ondo APC primary: Membership revalidated list causes uproar
A total of 172,025 members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State are to participate in the direct primary election to pick the party’s candidate for the Novmember governorship election.
This was contained in the list of revalidated members of the party conducted by national leadership of the party.
The revalidated list has, however, caused upset within the ranks of the party as some wards were discovered not to have any registered member of the party.
What further caused outcry were the huge registered members from some local government areas in the state.
From the figures released, it showed that the party raked in N412, 600, 000 from dues paid by members.
Besides, some wards in Akoko Northeast, Odigbo, Ese-Odo and Okitipupa have no registered members of the party.
The wards are Arogbo 1, 11 and 111 in Ese-Odo, Ikado II in Akoko Northeast, Ajue in Odigbo and Ayeka Igbidigbo in Okitipupa.
In Ore 11 ward, the Ondo APC has only two registered members.
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Ilaje local government, where Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa hails from, has 27,015 APC members while Akure South, the state capital has 8,441 revalidated members.
Ondo West has 22,122 members while Ese-Odo has 1084 revalidated members.
The lawmaker representing Odigbo Constituency 1 in the Ondo State House of Assembly, Hon Ifabiyi Samuel Olatunji, said he was shocked to see only two revalidated members from his ward.
According to him: “It is a fraud of the highest order. A situation in my ward, only two people registered and two people were revalidate. It is a lie from the pit of hell. We have 11 wards and we have registered members of the party. We have over 1000 registered APC members in my ward. To my surprise somebody brought only two registered members. This is a real shamble. We are building on zero level and fraud. Membership register is key to this election and situation where the membership register is faulty, the whole system is faulty.”
A former Commissioner for Water Resources, Olotu Fatai, who hails from Akoko Norh East said the membership revalidation was deregistration of members in disguise.
“It is laughable. In my local government, the figure release is 6000 whereas we have APC registered members of over 40,000. Is membership revalidation equal to deregistration of members of the party. The Committee came to deregister members of the party. I cannot fathom any reason for doing this. You have local government on water have over 20,000. Those of us on land given 6000. The exercise was shrouded in secrecy. We didn’t know when then came and the parameter used for the exercise. It seems the party has compromise the whole exercise and there is no ay you can get credible results from the figures released.”
Some aspirants on Wednesday kicked against the use of the revalidated list of members.
They demanded that the party make available to them the membership register already certified by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the only lawful register to be used by the party for the conduct of the primary election.
