Pressure is mounting on the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, over the party’s handling of recent primaries across the country.
The exercise has been dogged by a series of complaints that the leadership of the party was not fair.
During a protest in Calabar yesterday, a faction of the party loyal to Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Usani Usani called for Oshiomhole’s resignation.
The aggrieved members bore placards with the inscriptions: “Stop Imposition Oshiomhole! Stop Fighting Our Chosen One! Oshiomhole Must Go! No Usani, no APC in Cross River State!”
Addressing the demonstrators, the commissioner representing Cross River on the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr. Sylvester Nsa, said: “Oshiomhole should resign.
“If he continues, he will destroy this party. The people of Cross River have gone out to protest against impunity, injustice, total and blatant refusal to respect court ruling by the national chairman.”
Nsa accused Oshiomhole of “playing down the integrity of the judiciary,” saying: “Oshiomhole must leave us alone, otherwise, he would come to Cross River and walk alone because the people are angry and have spoken that we want Usani.”
The Etim John factional executive had produced Usani as governorship candidate while that of Dr Mathew Achigbe, which is recognised by the national executive, had Senator John Owan-Enoh.
The Etim John faction challenged the legality of its rival in an Abuja High court and got a ruling that its executive and its recognition by the national body were null and void.
Achigbe’s faction and the national body however ignored the ruling, saying the Abuja court lacked jurisdiction and that a subsisting case by the Achigbe bloc was pending in a High Court in Cross River.
Also, four APC senatorial aspirants in Delta South kicked against their exclusion from the primary, despite claiming to have met all the requirements.
The aspirants, Temisan Omatseye, Michael Johnny, Evans Omatsoguwa and Omatsola Okorodudu, issued a joint statement dismissing the primary as a sham.
The trio said they paid N7 million, being the cost of the expression of interest and nomination forms, filled in the same and were screened by “a team appointed by the NWC and chaired by former Senate President Ken Nnamani.”
Shockingly, “at the venue (of the election), we were informed that a publication had been released by the APC that only one person was cleared to contest and that we, the remaining four contestants, had been technically disqualified by the APC.
“Meanwhile, the only cleared candidate has inundated the social media with claims of being unopposed.
“A claim that is false, as neither the delegates nor the other four aspirants got together to endorse him in any form.”
