BREAKING! PDP cancels 3-man delegate election for Abia
By Steve Oko
The three-man delegate election of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, scheduled for today ( Saturday), nation-wide, has been put on hold in Abia State, Wawa News Global can authoritatively report.
National Organising Secretary of the PDP, Hon. Umar Bature, who confirmed this to our Correspondent in a telephone interview, said the national leadership of the party decided to put it on hold to enable it set up a panel to conduct the exercise on a later date.
He said there was a court order restraining the party from conducting the exercise in Abia but added that the order had been vacated.
Bature said that with the restraining court order having been vacated, the party would now set up an adhoc committee to organise the exercise on a future date.
” It is very obvious the exercise can’t hold today in Abia because people going there to conduct it will have to get time to travel.
“We have a court order in three states – Abia, Kano and Ebonyi States, but two have been vacated Abia and Kano – remaining Ebonyi which was not an order per say but a valid court judgement.”
On the conflicting reports that the exercise would hold today as planned, Nature said:”They know the procedure of how things are done. If we had set up a committee yesterday, they would have been there now but there was a court order. But now it has been vacated. We will set up a panel. But because of the holidays it can’t be today.”
Controversy had trailed the conduct of the exercise in the state following the alleged power tussle among the various camps in the ruling party.
There have been confusion and conflicting reports over the fate of the exercise in Abia as the various power blocs in the party intensify schemes to outsmart the other.
A source told Wawa News Global that the controversy over the authenticity of list of delegates was the beginning of the confusion as various aspirants have forwarded their own lists to the National leadership of the party in Abuja.
Following the refusal of the various gladiators to shift grounds for a possible compromise, Abuja was said to have directed that the exercise be cancelled for Abia.
There were speculations that the party might settle for only statutory delegates for its primaries in Abia as the middle ground following the avalanche of petitions and counter petitions arising from the state.
As at Friday night, the news was that the exercise had been cancelled.
But when contacted this morning (Saturday), the Abia State Publicity Secretary of PDP, Hon. Fabian Nwankwo, said the exercise would hold as scheduled.
He said that the 17 Local Government Chairmen of the party had been directed to proceed to the party secretariat in Umuahia for collection of election materials in their respective Councils.
The Publicity Secretary said that he was told that a court order against the exercise had been vacated.
Speaking with our Correspondent later, the State Secretary of the party, Mr David Iroh, a Barrister, admitted that there was uncertainty over the exercise as at Friday night but said that the State Chairman of the party, Rt. Hon. Asiforo Okere, had called him Saturday morning to inform him that the exercise would hold.
His words: ” As at yesterday when I left the party office with my Chairman, we were not sure the election was going to hold.
But early this morning, my Chairman called me and said it was likely to hold. He told me he had got signals from Abuja that it would hold”.
Asked what gave rise to the uncertainty in the first place, the party’s Scribe said ” so many things could have given rise to that because this is political season”.
” We are having too many court cases”, he added.
A source had also confided in Wawa News Global that the leadership of the party as at Friday night was making frantic efforts to vacate a court order restraining the party from conducting the exercise.
There is a cold war brewing in Abia PDP as the party is split into two major camps – those in support of power shift to Abia North, and those behind the alleged Ngwa self succession agenda.
It was alleged that there was a plot to manipulate the three-man delegate election in favour of a certain ” anointed candidate”.
But those opposed to the move have vowed never to allow the masterminds to have their way, thus their resolve to shift the battle ground to Abuja.
They insist that delegates should not be hand-picked by anybody to enable them vote Independently without any external influence or monetary inducements at the primaries.
The national leadership of PDP is said to be favourably disposed to providing a level playground for all contestants.
PDP’s national leadership has also urged various states and and councils to respect their local zoning arrangements if any.
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