Governorship aspirants of the the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta State freely bribed delegates to canvass votes at the primary election held on Monday.
Vanguard reports that it witnessed a delegate being offered N500,000 and asked to take an oath that he would not vote for somebody else. Some aspirants were also said to have offered delegates N1 million each to vote for them.
However, Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa emerged the PDP governorship candidate for Delta, polling out 406 votes.
Former Minister of State for education Nyesom Wike emerged the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers State despite the opposition of some party elders.
Wike scored He scored 1,083 votes out of a total of 1,108 delegates’ votes to claim the party’s ticket, leaving 17 other aspirants aggrieved. The aspirants described the primaries as a sham.
They said that the whole process that led to the primaries had been skewed to produce Wike as candidate of the party. According to the aspirants who spoke at the campaign office of Major Lancelot Anyaya (rtd), in new GRA area of Port Harcourt, what happened as governorship primaries was a charade because “due process was not followed. So real election did not take place. What you saw as election was a tragic comedy of wickedness by a few persons to enslave Rivers people.”
In Oyo, former Governor Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala could not win the PDP ticket, as it was snapped up by Former, Senate Leader, Teslim Kolawole Folarin. He had since decamped to the Labour Party.
According to Akala, his decision was made based on the demand by his teeming supporters to quit PDP.
In a press statement on his behalf by his media aide, Mr Abraham Ojo, “thousands of supporters of the former governor stormed the Bodija residence to delibrate on the way forward, after the injustice meted to him by the PDP.
“After series of meetings and discussions, they all decided to dump the PDP and move to an alternative party, which is Labour Party.”