Kogi State chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Bello, has told those agitating for direct primary election ahead of November’s governorship election, that there is no going back on the decision.
Bello, speaking with ThisDay, lashed out at a Lagos-based APC pressure group, the Change Agent Foundation International (CAFI), which is mounting pressure on the party leadership to adopt a direct primary election.
The CAFI, led by Dipo Okeyomi, in demanding for a direct primary poll, is rooting for the rejection of Governor Yahaya Bello as the party’s flagbearer.
But Bello says APC’s national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, had made a pronouncement that the Kogi APC primary election would be by the delegate system.
“I wonder if people in this so-called group called CAFI ever went to school; this is because the APC national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, had made it expressly clear that the coming primary (poll) is going to be indirect.
“So when the party at the national level had taken a decision, I wonder how a group, however, called, would come up to say it wants to overthrow the decision.
“Apart from that, the National Leader of the party, who is President Muhammadu Buahri, convened a stakeholders’ meeting before the 2019 general election and there, the party took a decision that each State Executive Council (SEC) should meet and decide whether to make their primary election direct or indirect.
“And in Kogi State, we resolved on the indirect method or what is also known as the delegate system, and it was ratified by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party.
“So, I wonder how a group tucked somewhere will now come and change what the party at both the national and state level had endorsed,” Bello said.
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