Three aggrieved governorship aspirants of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State Friday rejected the decision of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) to uphold the primary result, which favoured Mr. Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN.
The trio, Senator Ajayi Boroffice, Olusola Oke and Mr. Segun Abraham made their grievances known at a press conference held in Akure, the state capital.
At the event, which was also attended by their teeming supporters, Abraham was avoidably absent but sent his apology.
Speaking on behalf of other aspirants, Boroffice particularly described the decision by Chief John Oyegun to uphold the result, despite that majority of the committee members kicked against it as undemocratic.
He said they were consulting and would soon make public the next line of action on their political careers.
Boroffice said, “as enumerated in our petitions, which we submitted to the Appeal committee that was duly constituted by the NEC with the approval of the NWC of APC and as contained in the primary election guidelines of APC, the followining are the planks upon which our appeals are based:
“Fraudulent injection of 383 names into the delegates list that was used to conduct the primary election.
“Issuance of delegate tag to non-delegates and allowing the non-delegates to vote in the primary election.
“On investigation, 300 delegates tags were indiscriminately issued to non-delegates, two designated buses were provided to convey known non-delegates to the voting centre and voted to give undue advantage to one of the aspirants. These among others were discovered after the charade called credible election.
“It is important to bring into the public domain that on September 2, a new copy of compromised delegates list was made available to all the aspirants by the election committee of APC around 10.30pm.
“On the receipt of the purported new delegates list, we all made a written protest letter, including Rotimi Akeredolu SAN, transmitted our letters to the primary election committee chairman informing him of our rejection of the substituted delegates list.
“As democrats, having discovered the fraud in the process, we submitted ourselves to the process of redress as stipulated in the primary election guidelines of APC, believing that we are safe in the hands of supposed democrats.
“The Appeal Committee, within the mandate of their authority, having regards to the preponderance of evidence laid before it recommended that the election be nullified and another election be conducted.