- Our rebranding paying off, says party
Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the July 14 Ekiti State governorship election, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, has expressed his readiness to take on challenges from other contestants in the election.
Olusola, who spoke yesterday in Abuja after receiving his certificate of return from the party’s leadership as its candidate for the election, said PDP would continue to rule in Ekiti State after the expiration of the tenure of Governor Ayodele Fayose.
“I want to assure our national leaders that Ekiti State is for PDP. All the other parties are just shouting. Let them bring money, let them bring violence, Ekiti people will resist them.
“We are no more interested in accommodating unnecessary interlopers, people want to take us through another round of economic slavery. We are no more ready for that.
“I am ready to take up this challenge as the incoming governor of Ekiti State on the platform of the PDP,†he promised.
Olusola praised the conduct of the primary, and said the party has eliminated impunity and imposition of candidates.
“We are a party where integrity, fairness and transparency hold and are the order of the day. A party where there is order and leadership is respected. This is a pattern of the leadership we have at the national level,†he added.
The PDP governorship candidate also took a swipe at the All Progressives Congress (APC), and said there is a big difference between the PDP and the party.
“In our party, we don’t kick ballot boxes. In our party, we don’t snatch ballot boxes and we don’t engage in violence. In our party, we don’t have any cause to cancel any election. We don’t have any reason to postpone or suspend any election. Even when elections are scheduled for a particular date, some people in other parties will still fix it for another day because they can’t get their act in order,†he stated.
PDP Deputy National Chairman (South), Yemi Akinwonmi, while presenting the certificate to the party’s governorship candidate on behalf of the national chairman, described the primary that produced Olusola are most credible and transparent which as not challenged.
“There was no problem in which the loser accepted the outcome and the winner accepted victory,†he stated. The occasion also witnessed the submission of the report of the conduct of the primary to the PDP national leadership by the secretary of the commission, Dr. Barka Sani, who stood in for the Chairman, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the PDP has commended its members in state, the critical stakeholders, particularly, Fayose, the aspirants as well as the delegates, for the conduct of a peaceful, free, fair and credible PDP governorship primary last Tuesday.
The party said the unprecedented orderliness and spirit of sportsmanship that pervaded the exercise is a clear testimony of the engrained values of fairness and strict adherence to internal democracy in the rebranded, repositioned and retooled PDP.
Under the leadership of Prince Uche Secondus, the PDP has thrown impunity, imposition and interferences in electoral process, into the dustbin of history.
The Osun and Ekiti electoral thresholds will guide our electioneering processes at all levels, particularly, our presidential primary.
In the same vein, Secondus said the successful conduct of hitch free and transparent gubernatorial primaries in Ekiti State on Tuesday is a consequence of the party rebranding and repositioning project that has proved to be on course.
Secondus said the real winner from the exercise was democracy and not any individual as the PDP family in Ekiti would be healthier from the primary.
