BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
The ruling All Progressives Congress has asked the Peoples Democratic Party and its Governors Forum to get used to the direct primary election proposed by the National Assembly in the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, saying that it will strengthen the nation’s democracy.
The South-West Publicity Secretary of the APC, Oladapo Karounwi, in an interview with The Point, claimed that the PDP was unduly attached to the indirect primary where delegates were assembled and bribed to vote for a particular candidate.
“Why is PDP and their governors afraid of direct primary? Democracy is a popular opinion. Direct primary will strengthen our democracy. It will allow party members to have a say in who becomes their leader. It’s a pity that the PDP doesn’t want to change from the habit of gathering delegates in expensive hotels and bribing them to vote for some privileged candidates. Whether they like it or not, they should get used to direct primary,” Karounwi said.
He added that the PDP had yet to perform optimally as a major opposition party, noting that it failed to offer useful advice to the ruling APC government. “PDP has failed in offering an alternative to Nigerians. Have they offered alternative advice even to the government in power? They are not giving us alternative thinking. They lack the moral right to complain and criticise APC government. PDP is bereft of ideas,” he claimed.
Karounwi described the allegation by the Forum of PDP Governors that the Federal Government was using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to intimidate its members to join the APC as baseless and unfounded.
He stressed that it was evident that “all that they (PDP) do is to level corruption allegations against the government and it means they are not clean.” “They should bring evidence of intimidation and coercion. Why should they be afraid that EFCC will be used against them if their hands are clean?
“Mark my words, more PDP governors are still coming into APC. Some of them who have yet to defect to APC are one leg in, one leg out. In the next couple of weeks, they will defect fully. The PDP is really sinking,” he stated.
However, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Diran Odeyemi, has described the ruling party as lacking in democratic tenets. He said that the PDP would reject efforts by the APC to compel political parties to conduct direct primaries, pointing out that the prerogative to decide the mode of party primary to use was an internal arrangement of political parties, hence should not be interfered with.
