Edo State Deputy Governor and Secretary, Anambra PDP Governorship Primary Election Committee, Philip Shaibu has revealed that less than 200 delegates would vote to elect a candidate for the party.
Shaibu who stood in for Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, chairman of the committee, said the party had a delay in the process but would start voting soon.
He addressed journalists at the Prof. Dora Akunyili Women’s Development Centre shortly after a closed-door meeting with governorship aspirants.
He said: “We just concluded the first round of accreditation and the second and most important is the one we just started now. What we just did was to get everybody that is a delegate here and left every other person that has no business in here outside. The next stage is for them to go inside and we give them the accreditation tags.
“What we have so far from the list I just received is less than 200 delegates as against 230 that we have on our list. And for us, that makes more sense than to have over 230. So, we’ll be starting in a very short while and we will be going local government by local government inside.
“We had a little hitch at the beginning because we had to stop every aspirant at the gate to search them. The aspirants were not comfortable with that. But it is just measures we had to put in place for safety and measures for transparency and for everybody to be carried along to make sure that we have a successful primary that would be seemingly said to be free, fair and acceptable by all.”
He stated that he was determined to deliver a free and fair primary election, stating that his happiness is that the aspirants have so far conducted themselves well, also stating that some have even stepped down for others to ensure a seamless process.
“I am determined to have a free, fair and credible primary election and that is why we engaged ourselves inside to make sure that all the fears of the aspirants are sorted out. At the end of the day, we all agreed to go ahead.
“Interestingly, three aspirants stepped down and they also pledged loyalty to the party and whoever will emerge as a winner in this primaries because for them, they are determined to work with whoever that emerges today to reclaim Government House,” he said.
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