A serious crisis might have started brewing in the Enugu State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) over the recently concluded primaries of the party for the December 2011 Local Government Elections.
The ruling party purportedly held its primaries last Saturday but majority of the aspirants alleged that they were unjustly excluded.
A source disclosed that the aggrieved aspirants and some party faithful might have initiated plans to call on Governor Sullivan Chime to remove the state PDP Chairman, Engr Vita Abbah,? over his alleged inability to harmonise the different interests of all the aspirants.
It would be recalled that prior to the primaries, PDP raked in about? N168 Million from the sales of forms for the forthcoming Local Government Elections in the state.
It was gathered that? each of? 220 local council chairmanship aspirants for the 17 local government councils in the state? collected? forms for the local government election coming up in December with N350, 000.
This amounted to a total of N77 million while the 1,330 councillorship aspirants for the 260 seats in the state each collected the form for N70, 000 which amounted to N91 million.
Our investigations revealed that majority of the aspirants were not happy that the party? collected huge sums of money from them without informing? them that some aspirants had already? been considered for the positions.
One of the aspirants who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity?? said it was unfortunate that Engr Vita Abbah and members of his executive? adopted undemocratic principles during the harmonisation exercise and advised the party? to compensate all the aspirants that were unlawfully excluded or be prepared to face legal battle.
The aspirant, who said he was speaking the minds of other aggrieved aspirants, said that they might either join other parties to contest against? PDP candidates? or go to court to seek redress.
He alleged that the leadership of the party forced them to step down for unpopular candidates without considering their huge expenditure.
It could be recalled that the? party had during an interactive meeting with local government chairmanship and counsellorship aspirants which took place early this month at Nondon Hotel, Enugu, preached the need to prone down the number of aspirants.
In his speech during the meeting, , Abba said there was need “for wider consultations among the? party stakeholders at the various local government areas so as to prune the number of aspirants and possibly arrive at a consensus candidate.”
While positing that there was need for aspirants to respect the supremacy of the party vis-à-vis its decisions,? Abba? canvassed for the need for violent free primaries for the local council elections.
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