Ahead of the June 2023 Peoples Democratic Party’s governorship primary election in Kogi State, party leaders in the state on Wednesday accused the National Organising Secretary, Col. Umar Bature of working against the collective interest of the party.
They also accused Bature of attempt to impose Senator Dino Melaye on them against their interest.
Addressing journalists at the PDP National Secretariat on Wednesday, Hon Farouk Adejoh-Audu, spokesperson, Coalition of PDP Stakeholders in Kogi State, said the entire list from his local government had been changed.
He said, “One man called Bature just sat down and changed everything. For four years, we will be running away from Yahaya Bello, his thugs and guns and people will sit in Abuja here changing whatever comes to them. They are here in the National Secretariat.
“The NOS we are told, has changed our list because he has a friend whom they were together in the National Assembly. The person wrote a list and gave it to him. The one we brought from the list, DSS was there, Police was there, INEC was there and they signed the result. But that result has been changed in the National Secretariat. That is the kind of thing going on here. We can’t be doing this and be crying that they rigged us out of the presidential election. Why will they not rig you out when we have people within our own ranks who are disenchanted?
“Our major opponent in the election is our party itself, the people in this National Secretariat and some leaders of the party who are notorious for peddling interests.
“We were very happy that our flagbearer has responded to allegations and criticisms that he is behind those manipulations. He has said that he’s not involved with the manipulations and that he has no preferred candidates in Kogi State governorship race but he must go beyond those words.
“We know that Sen. Abdul Ningi is his boy. We shall not agree that Abdul Ningi will come to Kogi State and run away with result sheets and begin to write strange names as delegates. If he doesn’t know, then we are telling him that the person responsible is Abdul Ningi and Ningi is his boy.
“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as our flag bearer, is the leader of the party today. Atiku Abubakar should call Abdul Ningi or anyone to order today for the right thing to be done.
“This is what pushed Peter Obi out of PDP and this cost us so much in this election. If Peter Obi were in PDP, whether he was running mate or not, we would not have lost Eastern Nigeria, which was naturally our catchment area. They did a delegate election and this Secretariat changed the names of delegate list of Anambra State, and Peter Obi faced with disgrace in that election, because strange people were brought into the list in Anambra State, Peter Obi left the PDP and today we are at the mercy of the court and INEC.
“If you go and manipulate the Congress list, so that you can award easy victory to one of the candidates, what do you intend to do with the tickets?
“When you manipulate crudely in such a primitive manner, what do you intend to do with the tickets? Who will come and work for you when you didn’t win the primary?
“Possibly there could be an agreement between them with some people that they don’t want PDP to win our state, that could be the only reason. The person they are going to give the ticket will use the ticket and be trading and collecting money from people, then he will be pocketing the whole money and at the end of the election, he will be richer than he went in.”
On Appeals Committee:”What we have discovered so far is that integrity does not work when it comes to party. We do not believe that Appeals Committee has the capacity to reject the will of Atiku Abubakar. All we are asking for is that Atiku Abubakar should in the name of God, should go beyond denial and ensure that not one single name among delegates in changed. The names allocated to Dino is 185. That is the known ones. If you want to give it to Dino, then don’t sell the forms.
“He will pocket the whole money and at the end of the election, he would be richer than when he went in. That can only be the reason because, why do you do all this? That is why we have come to cry out, We are begging this national secretariat that push Peter Obi out of PDP that this time around, they should not push people out of PDP. We have stayed constant in PDP. The person they are trying to manipulate this ticket for has ran away from our party several times. He keeps going and coming. Some of us have been here and we don’t have any other party to go to.
There is no possibility of us going to work with Yahaya Bello . There is no way we can function with him. That is why we have come to cry out that you should help us tell the world that even before the contest in Kogi is to start, the PDP is undermining its own fortune in our state. It is our party that is about to defeat pour party in our state, not even the APC, by manipulating the delegates list . We now believe that even if we go for primaries , they will try to manipulate the process so that their preferred candidate will emerge. Everybody knows this candidate. It is very disheartening. The preferred candidate of the leadership of this party happens to be one man called Daniel Melaye alias Dino, who was the mascot of the PCC.
Because you are very pleased with the performance of the mascot , because he made you laugh or insulted people for you, is that enough to award the governorship ticket of our party to him? Check Dino’s records. He has never been employed one day. The only job he has done is that in 2007, he dropped Obasanjo’s name and Ibrahim Idris gave him a ticket to run for the Federal House of Representatives. But he went there and disgraced Kogi thoroughly. He was suspended from the House and remained suspended until that House expired. He fought and his shirt was torn. That is the person they want to award the ticket. It shows a lot of contempt for the state we come from for anybody to sit down and think that Daniel Melaye is the right person, ignoring SANS, captains of industries, who are looking for this ticket. You deny them opportunity of free contest and handover the ticket to Dino because he was the mascot in your campaign. That is very unfortunate.
We are calling on Atiku, we have heard his denial but we don’t believe him. As a party leader, he has influence over this secretariat.”
