PDP: Bisi Kolawole wins Ekiti gov primary

;
.
FORMER chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Ekiti State, Mr. Bisi Kolawole, yesterday, emerged as the party’s candidate for the June 18 governorship election in Ekiti State.

Kolawole defeated former governor, Segun Oni, and a former deputy governor of the state, Kolapo Olusola.

The lawmaker, representing Ekiti South Senatorial District, Senator Biodun Olujimi, had pulled out of the race, accusing the party of disenfranchising her.

The primary election took place in Ado-Ekiti.

The delegates first converged at the Pastoral Centre, in Ado-Ekiti, to get accredited, after which they moved to Great Eagle Hall for the voting exercise.

Chairman of the primary election committee, Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom State, declared Kolawole the winner of the contest.

According to the results, Kolawole scored 671 votes, while Kayode Adaramodu scored 10 votes, Kazeem Ayodeji, 6, Olusola Kolapo, 93, Deborah Ali, 1, Ojo, 1, Makanjuola, 1, Biodun Olujimi, 2, Aderemi Adewumi, 1, Adewale Aribisala, 56, and Segun Oni got 330 votes. 

*As Wike, Udom, Anyim insist on Southern Presidential candiate

...Sowunmi makes case for Atiku

Unlike in 2019 when the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, ceded its Presidential ticket to the North, there is no consensus yet as to which of the zones will produce the party’s flag bearer in the 2023 presidential election.

This comes against the backdrop of insistence by powerful members of the party on the emergence of president of Southern extraction.

Vanguard reports that Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, his Akwa Ibom State counterpart, Udom Emmanuel, and former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, are some of the PDP chieftains bent on having the leadership of the party look in the direction of the South in 2023.

It would be recalled that the National Executive Committee, NEC at its 89th meeting in February 2020, constituted a 14-man committee to review reasons the party lost the 2019 Presidential election and was subsequently tasked to recommend to the party how to avert a recurrence   in future elections.  

Although the Bala Mohammed Committee recommended to the leadership of the party that the presidential ticket be made open to all six geo-political zones; PDP governors from the South are rooting for the zone to produce a candidate that will slug it out with the All Progressives Congress   in 2023.

It was gathered that Governor Wike had been reaching out to other PDP governors from the North on the need to reciprocate the support of the South as demonstrated in the race to the Port Harcourt Presidential convention in 2018.

The 2018 convention, which produced Atiku as the flag bearer had the Rivers State governor openly rooting for his Sokoto State counterpart, Aminu Tambuwal, who finished second behind Atiku.  

From the moment the former Vice President emerged winner, Wike queued behind him, urging party members to work together in the interest of the party.

A senior aide to the governor who does not want his name in print,said that: “Governor Wike was preaching fairness, equity and justice.  

"But beyond that, he is making a solid case for the South because in 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari would have completed his second tenure and it does not make sense to push out another Northerner regardless of the party, to succeed him.  

"This is why His Excellency wants the party to look at the South because we have leaders with the requisite competence to turn the fortune of this country around.”

Only recently, Atiku was said to have met with Wike on his presidential bid only for the Rivers State governor to tell the Wazirin Adamawa to wait until the leadership of the party took a position on zoning.  

Governor Wike, also urged the former Vice President to be prepared to support a Southern candidate should the leadership of the party decides to go South in 2023. It is not certain if Atiku gave his word on possible support for a southern candidate or not.

An indication that the South is unlikely to settle for anything other than the presidency this time emerged last week when a former Commissioner of Information in Edo State and spokesman of Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign Organization, Kassim Afegbua, chided the former Vice President’s over his renewed interest in the race and urged him to take a seat in political retirement.

However, in a media chat, Segun Sowunmi, a member of PDP and spokesperson to Atiku, said if the PDP was desirous of winning the Presidency, it should settle for no other candidate but the former Vice President, saying he had the wherewithal and experience required to bail the country out of its current woes.

"Atiku understands how to run and work democracy. Atiku understands how to manage power, Atiku understands and had gone through the rigours of how administrative civil service procedures ought to work and should work.  

"Atiku understands how to bring deliberate steps and actions to create big ripple effects that can impact an economy and make life far more abundant for the people. And you must be persuaded by the fact that but for Obasanjo/Atiku years, Nigeria doesn’t seem to have had any major high points on the overall composite assessment of how life has been in the democracy.  

"Anybody can claim that he is in charge but the truth of the matter is that some of the players of that era know what the Vice President Atiku Abubakar contributed and brought to the table,” he said.

On calls by Afegbua for Atiku to retire, Sowunmi said the Okpella-born Prince “has been very inconsistent,” saying, “as at the last time I checked, I don’t know whether he is a truly PDP man. It seems Afegbua is always available to do the hatchet job of those who sponsor him.

“When he (Afegbua) came with his agenda to remove Uche Secondus, I was nervous because I wanted a situation where you do not destroy or do more harm to the party in a bid to finish a term that was already about to finish.’’

"But at last, they care not what the consequences of rhetoric were and all their rhetoric was indicating or suggesting instability in a political party.

“This is the sane man when the party finished everything and chose a candidate in Edo State for the governorship election; he boastfully and publicly worked against the party. Shall I now begin to exchange words with a man who had not been consistently PDP when in the real sense of the word, I have been PDP since the day the party came into existence?  

“In 2018, Afegbua supported the man in Sokoto (Tambuwal) and we beat them resoundingly by the grace of God and by the help of   Nigerian people in Port Harcourt and I can tell you we have the ability in a free, fair and transparent election to beat them even more,” he added.

Culled from Van