Prevail on APC NWC to conduct indirect guber primary in Edo, Buhari urged

• I8 council party chairmen back Obaseki’s re- election bid

AGROUP, Edo Unity League ( EUL), has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to prevail on the National Working Committee ( NWC) of the All Progressives Congress ( APC) to adopt an indirect primary in the selection of its candidates for the September 19,22020 governorship election in Edo State on account of the ravaging COVID- 19 pandemic.

Addressing reporters yesterday in Benin City, the group’s facilitator and a party chieftain, Comrade Aiyamenkhue Edokpolo, stressed that the model was result- oriented and social distancing- compliance.

He claimed that 95 per cent of APC primaries had been indirect even when the world had tasted the novel coronavirus, wondering why the NWC would propose direct primary amid the disease with the attendant adverse consequences.

Edokpolo contended that the current decision of the Comrade Adams

Oshiomhole- led leadership was “antithetical to all known protocols of security and health safety in the era of COVID- 19 pandemic.”

Explaining that medical experts had warned against huge gatherings, the facilitator stated: “Mobilising 350,000 members of APC across the 192 wards of Edo, in the face of crass ignorance of COVID- 19 existence and incontrovertible facts of rural illiteracy, the fatality of COVID- 19 will be worsened in our state.”

He added: “In the indirect mode, the about 3500 delegates and INEC officials can be effectively coordinated in one or two centres in Benin within the extant rule of social distancing. The Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium has a 30,000 seating capacity, and has over five newly built mini structures that can be utilised.”

Meanwhile, the party chairmen in all of the state’s 18 council areas yesterday backed Governor Godwin Obaseki’s second term bid.

They condemned the purported move of a faction loyal to Oshiomhole mulling the adoption of Pastor Osagie Ize- Iyamu as the party’s consensus candidate

In a statement signed by Benjamin Oghumu of Orhionmwon Local Council and 17 others, the APC chairs stated that Ize- Iyamu was not a member of the party.

They recalled that the gubernatorial hopeful led his followers out of the ruling party in 2014 to contest the governorship election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) in 2016, which he lost.