Ekiti State: Governorship candidate to be picked today

 

 

AHEAD of the governorship elections, billed to hold on June 21 and August 9, 2014, in Ekiti and Osun States respectively, the All Progressives Congress (APC) will today hold its primaries to elect the candidates to represent the party in the elections in the two states.

Lai Mohammed, APC

Speaking on the primary election in Ekiti State, a statement signed by the National Organising Secretary of the party, Senator Osita Izunaso, noted that APC would adopt the direct primary method in all the 177 wards of the state, and that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would monitor the entire process from the Ward to the State level.

This, according to him, is in keeping with the Electoral Act, which stipulated the conduct of primaries for the emergence of party candidates for both the governorship and presidential elections in the country.

Izunaso, who led a six-man committee from Abuja to oversee the exercise, said the party would deploy two electoral officers and a returning officer to each of the wards for the exercise, while a returning officer would be appointed for each local government.

He said the Local Government returning officers would be responsible for the collation of results from the wards within each of the 16 local government areas and they would in return transmit results to the State Collation Centre.

“APC had taken this step to ensure a transparent and credible process as well as to comply with the stipulations of the electoral act,” Izunazo said.

The APC national organising secretary who assured that the exercise would be smooth, free and transparent said that the registration officers and ward local government supervisors during the party’s recent membership registration exercise would be deployed to handle the exercise.

Also speaking on the Osun primary in a statement, APC’s Publicity Director, Kunle Oyatomi, said Governor Rauf Aregebsola is the only aspirant who picked and returned the intention form. He said the primary would hold in the 332 wards in the state, adding: “The primary will take off at the ward centres

Ekiti State: Governorship candidate to be picked today