The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nentawe Yilwatda, has dismissed claims that candidates were imposed during the party’s primary elections.
PrimeTimes Nigeria reports that Yilwatda said the APC either adopted consensus, in which aspirants agreed, or conducted direct primaries when consensus failed.
He spoke on Monday during an interview on Arise News, while reacting to concerns that the party’s consensus arrangements could trigger an internal crisis.
The APC chairman said the party had 29 governorship contests involving returning governors and new aspirants across the states.
According to him, only three governorship candidates emerged through consensus, while others went through direct primaries.
Yilwatda said, “In the entire 36 states, we had 29 governors who were either returning or new people contesting for governorship in their states. We had only three consensus candidates for the governorship.
“All the rest went for direct primaries. There were no impositions because anytime we did, allow the law to run.”
Yilwatda said the APC created a consensus form to ensure that all aspirants agreed before any consensus candidate emerged.
He further stated, “Where consensus cannot come, you go for direct primaries. We created a consensus form. The consensus form allows all the aspirants to sign before the consensus takes place.
“So, where there’s consensus, any state, all the aspirants must have signed. That’s number one.”
The APC chairman also said some primaries were delayed due to complaints from aspirants.
According to him, the party shifted some elections by two or three days to address allegations of foul play before conducting the exercises.
“Number two, there are states that we had people appealing, that’s why we delayed some of the elections, that’s why some elections were even delayed for two to three days before we conducted them, because people now appealed that there was foul play, so we now shifted the election and made sure we conducted them later,” he said.
He added that appeal committees were set up to allow aggrieved aspirants to challenge the process.
“Then we had appeal committees, and people were allowed to also appeal the process,” Yilwatda said.