The APC Vanguard has dragged Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State to the APC National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, accusing the governor of plotting to foist Senator Smart Adeyemi as the preferred aspirant for Kogi West Senatorial District.
The convener of the group, Comrade Ayo Alonge, in a second letter addressed to Oshiomhole dated September 19, 2018, said “the dictatorial tendencies of Governor Bello” was capable of depriving the party of victory.
The group said it protested the ‘open and undemocratic endorsement’ of Senator Adeyemi by Bello because it was against the existing rotation arrangement in the senatorial district.
The letter, entitled “Fairness, Equity and Transparency, Panacea for Disastrous Electoral Outing For APC In Kogi West”, states that “The congresses of the party that produced delegates to vote in the indirect primaries were fundamentally flawed and compromised because names were written, compiled and affirmed by Bello’s appointees…coersion, intimidation and harassment is now the order of the day – all in a desperate bid to manipulate the process to skew the primaries in favour of an aspirant.”
The petitioners, who asked the APC national leadership to adopt direct primaries to guatantee a level playing ground, called for the deployment of persons of proven integrity to conduct the party primaries in Kogi West.
They also requested for the utilisation of numbered ballot papers with security features to expose and render unusable the alleged already printed fake ballot papers meant to be used.
The Kogi West APC Vanguard warned against looming crisis in the party “if the despotic activities of Gov Yahaya Bello are not curtailed.”