By PETER OKUTU
ABAKALIKI—AHEAD of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, National Convention scheduled to hold on Saturday, Ebonyi State chapter of the party, yesterday, endorsed the candidates who had indicated interest to occupy the position of the Deputy National Secretary, National Ex-Officio, zonal Youth Leader, Publicity Secretary and Ex-Officio at both National and zonal levels of the party.
The endorsement took place during a meeting of the State Executive Committee, SEC.
The selection of the candidates to occupy the positions were done through balloting, as a way of fostering internal democracy and consensus within the party structure.
Addressing newsmen at the end of the balloting, state Chairman of the party, Chief Ugorji Ama-Oti stated that Mr Onwe Solomon Onwe was one of those adopted by SEC as the consensus candidate for the position of Deputy National Secretary among others.
According to the Chairman, the decision of SEC would be transmitted to both the zonal and National levels for ratification before and during the National Convention in Abuja.
He said: "It was an emergency SEC meeting where we deliberated on some crucial issues. It was also to take a decision on some key positions that were zoned to Ebonyi particularly the Deputy National Secretary and National Ex-Officio member.
''Also, the positions available in the zone include, Youth leader, Publicity Secretary and Ex-officio. They zoned the National Ex-officio to Ebonyi and it must be a man. Before now, a woman has been there. The National Ex-officio is zoned to a woman as a man had occupied that position before.
"So on the issue of those who are interested, we discovered that only the position of the Deputy National Secretary was to be contested because three persons bought their forms for the position.
So what we did was to inform SEC members on the development and asked SEC members to make their inputs by way of voting; papers were distributed to all the SEC members, 69 in number including the Governor. Everybody wrote down the name of the aspirants of his or her own choice and at the end of the day 69 persons voted and we had only one void vote.
"At the end of the day, Mr Maxwell Ali scored one vote; Chief Obinna Ogba had two votes, while Mr. Onwe Solomon. Onwe scored 59 votes. That was the result of that voting exercise. So, it shows that Mr. Onwe is the choice of the majority having scored the highest number of votes cast.
"Other consensus candidates were Mr. Bartholomew Igboke for National Ex-officio, Mr. Ali Odefa for Publicity Secretary while the youth leader for the zone is Mr. Sylvester Igboko.
The Chairman debunked claims in some quarters that candidates were imposed on the party by Governor Martin Elechi stressing that "The Governor does not impose his will on anybody. He allows free participation. I may not be able to explain the absence of other candidates today but all l know is that the party made contact with them individually and not through text messages so that they will be here; and so why they are not here beats my imagination."
Vanguard Nigeria