Ebonyi: PDP holds primaries ahead council elections
From Chinedu Nwafor Abakaliki
Ebonyi State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday held primary elections across the 13 LGAs of the State as well as the 171 political wards to elect candidates for the July, 30, 2022 scheduled Local Government Elections in the State.
The Chairman of the Party in the State, Mr Tochuku Okorie, who spoke with at the Party’s secretariat, Abakaliki, said the exercise went peacefully across the State.
Okorie said the party would field candidates for the chairmanship race in all the 13 LGAs, and a greater number of the Councillorship positions.
“Today, we had primary elections across the wards and local government areas, for the forthcoming council elections, the EBSIEC organised elections. So, far so good, it has ended and we are collating results.
“I know that candidates have emerged across the local government areas of the state. We have candidates in both local government Chairmanship and ward councillorship positions. But we don’t have Councillorship candidates in some of the wards.”
On whether the party was confident that EBSIEC would conduct credible polls, Okorie said, “no matter how confident I am, the bottom line is that we are going to raise alarm any time we see omissiotn by EBSIEC that will jeopardize the credible conduct of the election.”
On the charge imposed on the political parties participating in the exercise by the State Electoral Commission which IPAC had kicked against, Okorie said,” PDP is part of IPAC, just like APC is also part of IPAC. If IPAC said something, it’s all the parties’ decision. Having said that, I think that it’s outrageous on the side of nomination form for the candidates. One million naira for Local Government Chairmanship candidate and two hundred thousand naira for the ward Councillorship candidates are outrageous. I’m of view that EBSIEC should review that.”
On the chances of the PDP in the election, Okorie said the PDP remained the party to beat in Ebonyi State.
“Notwithstanding the party crises, which I admit, the PDP is the party to beat even if it’s one person that remains in the party.”
