The National Working Committee (NWC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Thursday met with aggrieved governorship aspirants as part of efforts to forge a united front ahead of the November 21 off cycle election.
DAILY POST reports that the primary election conducted last weekend by a team led by Kogi State Governor, Usman Ododo, declared Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa as the winner having polled 48, 569 in the direct primary exercise to defeat all the other 15 aspirants.
However, some of the aspirants had kicked against the outcome of the election, alleging irregularities. The aspirants are; Olugbenga Edema, Omoba Jimmy Odimayo and Adewale Akinterinwa.
At the peace meeting held at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja, the National Chairman of the party, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje appealed to the aggrieved aspirants..
He stated: “I have to thank you for honouring our invitation in the shortest time and also considering the emotional distress as a result of the primary conducted in a few days.
“But equally the same, since we are all democrats we used to have ups and downs of politics. So I have to thank you for honouring our invitation.
“The purpose of this dialogue, this meeting is to appeal. The purpose is not to dwell on what has happened, what has not happened, what is correct, what is not correct. If we dwell on that then it will lead to what we call; ‘too much analysis leads to paralysis. If we are to dwell on that, there are professors, amongst us, lawyers, some are engineers, even the gender is being accommodated.
“We, who are less educated, the controversy will not cover us considering the galaxy of politicians who are here. So, our own is to appeal to you. We in the party here, we are both insiders and outsiders. So when you say something is inside and also outside you have to think about that oxymoron. You have to think about that controversy. We are insiders because it is our party, that is a ruling party in Ondo state and we are the managers of our party in Nigeria.
“So we are an interested party even if it is a local government election. We are outsiders because this state belongs to you, this party belongs to you. I am sure your prayer is that our party, your party should be the ruling party in Ondo state.
“I think this is our common focus, our party should be the ruling party in Ondo state. It is already a ruling party. Our prayer is that it should continue to be a ruling party in Ondo State. So you see, we are here to appeal to you so that we succeed in maintaining this state as APC state. I appeal to you, we are all practitioners in this game, in this politics, in this agenda.
“If you recall, I contested for governorship in 1999. I lost. I couldn’t become a governor until after 16 years. I was patient enough. I was praying and I eventually became a governor after 16 sixteen years. So I can’t call you that you are lost aspirants. You are aspirants that will be successful tomorrow.”