By Musa Baba Adamu
A former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State, Bisi Kolawole, has emerged as the candidate of the party for the June 18 governorship in the state.
Kolawole emerged the PDP candidate at the party’s primary election held in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, on Wednesday.
As declared by the Akwa Ibom State Governor and chairman of the party’s primary election committee, Udom Emmanuel, Kolawole had the highest number of votes to emerge winner.
Of all 17 aspirants cleared by the PDP Screening Committee to participate in the primary, it was only six aspirants who actively participated in the poll.
The former chairman, who is the anointed candidate of former Governor Ayodele Fayose, polled 671 votes to defeat his closest contender, also a former Governor, Olusegun Oni.
Oni only managed to score 330 votes while the PDP 2018 Governorship candidate and immediate past Deputy Governor, Kolapo Olusola, struggled to garner 93 votes.
While Wale Aribisala, Kayode Adaramodu and Deji Ogunsakin scored 52, 10 and 6 votes respectively, Mr Olusola’s poor outing cannot be isolated from his fallout with Mr Fayose, whom he deputised between 2014 and 2018.
A serving senator, Biodun Olujimi, had earlier faulted the exercise.
She had pulled out of the race hinging her reason on alleged ‘compromise’ of the process in favour of Fayose’s candidate.
Olujimi alleged that the delegate list had been tampered with to disenfranchise delegates from her constituency.
“I thought it was very unfair, it was unjust, it was disenfranchising me because of my gender or because the party feels I have not done enough for it. Going forward from there would mean that I am condoning what is wrong.
“So I thought my best was just to pull out and I pulled out. I did not step down. They can continue with it, I will also internalise the problem, there will be some introspection, then I will take a decision,” she said.
“I had a lengthy discussion with Governor Udom Emmanuel, the chairman of the election committee and he too was not aware until he brought out the list of Ekiti East and saw ‘undecided, yet to be decided’ etc on three sheets of paper with only 12 names that could vote on the top sheet. On the other one, he saw 10 names that could vote,” the lawmaker further explained.
However, the declared winner of the PDP governorship primary, Mr Kolawole, in his acceptance speech, described the election process as clear and credible.
“I am very sure members of our party, our leaders are very happy because we have promised that once the process is very open and fair to all, we will all accept the result. It has pleased God to make me the winner of the election, I willingly accept to be the flag bearer of our great party,” he said.
