Kolawole, a former Ekiti PDP chairman, had clinched the party’s governorship ticket on Wednesday, after defeating Segun Oni, an ex-governor, and Kolapo Olusola, former deputy governor, in a keenly-contested election.
Ekiti Political Intervention Coalition and Concerned Delegates and Party Members, two groups in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have faulted the just concluded primary election of the party in the state which produced Bisi Kolawole as its gubernatorial candidate.
Kolawole, a former Ekiti PDP chairman, had clinched the party’s governorship ticket on Wednesday, after defeating Segun Oni, an ex-governor, and Kolapo Olusola, former deputy governor, in a keenly-contested election.
But in a statement on Friday, the groups alleged irregularities in the election and tackled the party's national chairman Iyorchia Ayu over the outcome of the poll.
The groups said Ayu should expect his first defeat at the governorship election in the state because the process in picking Kolawole was not transparent.
In a statement signed by Banji Dada and Abayomi Olowomeye, the groups alleged that the emergence of Kolawole was orchestrated by Ayo Fayose, former Ekiti governor, in partnership with Kayode Fayemi, incumbent governor, to pave the way for the All Progressives Congress (APC) to win the governorship election.
The statement read: “We wish to make it abundantly clear to chairman Iyorchia Ayu and his national working committee to expect their first defeat because the PDP cannot win Ekiti on June 18, 2022.
“The winner of the primaries that you contrived to favour, Mr Ayodele Fayose, is a makeshift candidate planted by the former governor to help the candidate of incumbent Kayode Fayemi of the APC to win the guber election.”
They said they would encourage Biodun Olujimi, a governorship aspirant who pulled out from the exercise, to institute a legal action against the party.
The PDP NWC carried their insensitivity too far by initiating an opaque process that was rushed to favour a particular aspirant without allowing other aspirants the opportunity to verify the delegate lists and raise objections to the process,” they said.
“The exercise witnessed the mutilation and exclusion of delegates’ names from the register, the deliberate disenfranchisement of many automatic delegates who were accredited but denied tags and prevented from voting.”