National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, has said his biggest fear for the forthcoming Anambra State off-cycle governorship elections is the ability of the state’s stakeholders to key into the arrangement to conduct a credible, transparent, free and fair party primary.
Ganduje spoke when a delegation of APC group, Booth to Booth with Bola Tinubu, majorly from Anambra State, visit the party’s headquarters in Abuja to demand that the national leadership conduct a credible and transparent primary in the state.
The former governor of Kano State recalled efforts made in a meeting with stakeholders before the death of Senator Ifeanyi Ubah to ensure that the primary will be a peaceful one.
He, however, hinged his worries on the fact that previous governorship primaries in the state had usually ended in litigations, emphasising that Anambra political stakeholders, with heavy financial war chest, have been disruptive with their wealth.
Responding to their appeal for APC to conduct credible primary and claim the state, Ganduje said: “I am glad to receive this entourage, particularly as they are mainly from Anambra State. I am also happy to see young men in politics.”
“I want to thank you for showing interest in Anambra State governorship and senatorial district elections. You know we lost our brother, Ifeanyi Ubah, who established a party by himself and won the election but later realised that APC is the party to join before he later died.
“As you said, there will be an off-cycle governorship election in Anambra State and we have heard your request for indirect, free, fair, transparent primary.
“In fact, we met with stakeholders from Anambra State, comprising the sons, daughters, heavyweight, very rich politicians and I told them that Anambra is an important state in the South East geopolitical zone and Nigeria.
“But Anambra State should contribute in sustaining democracy by providing a conducive atmosphere for peaceful elections. I told them if we must conduct a good primary and good election in the state, all our stakeholders must be born again because all of them are guilty of litigation, court order and they should know that it is not going to be business as usual.
“We must sanitise the system and corporate with one another. We know that they are rich but they should not use money to scatter the system, they should rather use it to build the system. I will be highly impressed if they can produce one consensus candidate. In fact, I and my National Working Committee (NWC) members will approach Mr President to give them a National Award. We assure you that we will arrange for credible, fair, and free primary in Anambra,” he promised.
On the mode of primary, Ganduje said: “whether direct or indirect, I tell you that as an institution, we have seen both sides of the divide and I want to assure you that we will sit down as NWC in conjunction with the leadership of the party in Anambra State to come up with whichever method we agreed and we will follow it as agreed.”
Earlier, leader of the delegation for the group, Iyke Madu, requested the support of the party’s leadership to adopt an indirect mode of primary to elect the candidate of the party due to the insecurity in the state.
“There is an issue of insecurity in Anambra as we speak, even the State government could not conduct their own local government elections due to insecurity.
“They wrote to some certain communities telling them that due to insecurity elections cannot be conducted in those places. And we are thinking, if a state government cannot conduct their own local government elections due to insecurity, it is going to be difficult for a party that does not control the state to do a direct primaries.
“So, we are here only requesting for the party to make these primaries indirect primaries. Our constitution provides for that. We want to also say that if our party, APC can win in Edo, winning Anambra State is also possible,” he appealed.
Credit: The Sun