Former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Diran Odeyemi, has said that the party’s failure at the just concluded Ekiti State Governorship elections is self-inflicted.
Odeyemi made this statement when he appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
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“Yes I believe so and that is exactly the situation and that was what happened. Self-inflicted in the sense that whatever vote is counted for Engr. Segun Oni normally should go to PDP. For the mere fact that he contested under another political party is immaterial.”
The Former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP noted that Engr Oni’s defection was also a contributing factor to his defeat at the polls.
“It is quite unfortunate that Nigerian politicians don’t imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship because if you lose an election at the primary level, one would have expected Engr. Oni to cooperate with the winner, Mr Bisi Kolawole, and support him in such a way that PDP would have won that election,” he stated.
“But here is Engr Oni who defected and, of course, this is his character and it is quite unfortunate that our electoral law gave room to people defecting from one political party to another and overnight becoming the candidate.”
Odeyemi further stated that the PDP lost the election due to internal conspiracy.
He said, “We lost to internal conspiracy; so, if you look at it internally, you may not know this but I want to tell you this. You may think that Engr Oni came second, but he came second because he had the support of PDP governors and leaders because many of them believed that he is their candidate and they supported him where he went to contest, leaving our candidate alone.
“The evidence of that is that throughout the campaign, none of the national officers, the presidential candidate and chairman of the party, none of them came to Ekiti to campaign for the PDP candidate which is very absurd …”
