The Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has accused the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of promoting impunity and circumventing due process in the primary elections.
While reacting to Oshiomhole’s attempts to defend the actions taken by his leadership on Tuesday, Okechukwu accused him of not giving regard to natural justice, equity and fair play when he allegedly populated and corrupted the panels that supervised the primaries with his ‘Edo Field Commanders’.
The VON DG, who lost the Enugu West senatorial ticket to Mrs Juliet Ibekaku, Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Justice Reform, told the APC national chairman that the federal character principle as enunciated in the 1999 Constitution, the Constitution of the APC and extant laws frowned at ‘nepotism and food-is-ready for his cronies.’
The APC chieftain said each state was entitled to one head of the panels if pecuniary consideration was not fingered paramount, stressing that each state and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have eminent persons to head one panel each instead of fanning out kindred and cronies as if it were bazaar handouts.
Okechukwu challenged Oshiomhole to tell Nigerians why he stopped Enugu State gubernatorial primary mid-way after what he called seamless conclusion of four out of 17 local government areas (LGAs) without genuine reason.
He also tasked him to justify the alleged unilateral reversal of indirect primary mode of election chosen by Enugu State to direct primary without proper resort to the National Working Committee (NWC) which approved the indirect primary.
The VON DG also challenged Oshiomhole to tell the world how the APC could win Imo State in 2019 in the cliff-hanger he allegedly ‘wittingly or unwittingly railroaded party’ into.
He advised the party leadership to use the substitution window to amend ‘some of the vote-death-traps laid by Comrade Oshiomhole and his gang.’
