Amos Gizo, a Plateau State chieftain of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), has faulted the process for the emergence of the party’s gubernatorial flag bearer, Nentawe Yilwatda.
The APC chieftain, who also ran for the party’s governorship ticket, said the process was brazenly abused and skewed to favour him, adding that he has never experienced what in his 45 years in politics.
“The party’s gubernatorial primary election a “sham” and the worst form of degrading democracy”, he said.
Gizo speaking to journalists in Jos, the state capital, urged the proper conduct of the election, beginning with the election of five delegates from each ward by the party’s guidelines and constitution.
“It is a disgrace that a state like Plateau engages in such a sham and people get away with it.” “The process was abused from the start.
“First and foremost, our party’s guidelines and constitution state that delegates who will ultimately vote to nominate the gubernatorial candidate must be elected. But I’d like to tell you that some people sat in Jos and drew up a list of five delegates for each of the State’s 207 wards.
“This came after the party’s State Chairman, Hon. Rufus Bature, promised delegate elections to produce the five delegates from each ward.” As a result, we purchased forms for all 1035 candidates across the 207 federal wards. No notice of a delegate election has been sent to us as of the time I am writing to you. “It was very surprising to us when they said they had a list of delegates,” he lamented.
Gizo also revealed that no delegates’ list was made available to other candidates before the alleged primary election.
This means that the delegates’ list was kept for a specific aspirant.” As a result, the other candidates “had no opportunity to even know who the delegates are, let alone reach out to them for campaigning,” Gizo stated.
He went on to say that all of this happened despite the Chairman’s denial of a fabricated delegates’ list when he confronted him about it.
The APC Chieftain also stated that no aspirant knew whether he was cleared or not until the primary election because no certificate of clearance was given to anyone two weeks after the exercise.
Gizo went on to say that it was at that point that he became suspicious that the process was being manipulated.
“I have never witnessed an election where you have delegates from an entire Local Government Area (about 70 of them) and any one of them knows how to write because they are all illiterate,” the APC stalwart continued.
As a result, an agent for one of the candidates voted for all of the delegates. What strikes me the most is that one of the delegates who committed this illegality was a Reverend. Consider a Reverend claiming he does not know how to write. So, how does he look after the flock?
As you can see, a lot of abnormalities occurred during the primary,” he continued.
“As far as we are concerned, there was no primary election in Plateau, and if the APC wants to get it right, it must restart this process,” he advised
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