![\"Ekiti](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1643451785_843_Alhaji_Badaru_Abubakar-300x176.jpg\")
Abubakar Mohammed Badaru, chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governorship Primary Election in Ekiti State, has stated that no contestant boycotted the party\u2019s shadow election held in the state on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Recall that\u00a0before the primaries, seven aspirants\u00a0complained that party members close to the governor were chosen to act as returning officers in various wards and local governments; an issue that was swiftly addressed, he claimed.<\/p>\n
Badaru made the announcement to journalists after presenting the official results of the state\u2019s 166 ward primaries to the Caretaker Committee at the party\u2019s national secretariat in Abuja yesterday, via the party\u2019s Director of Organization, Prof. Usujji Medaner.<\/p>\n
Badaru, who was accompanied by the party\u2019s former National Publicity Secretary, Malam Lanre Issa-Onilu, faulted the claim that some aspirants pulled out. He said nobody boycotted the exercise but only complained about the returning officers; an issue that was attended to.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n Asked why seven of the eight aspirants boycotted the exercise, Badaru said: \u201cThat is not true. When we landed on the 26th of January, I had meetings with all the aspirants and seven attended out of 8. We discussed the guidelines and we agreed on all the terms.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they are alleging probably was that party members loyal to the governor were chosen to serve as returning officers in various wards and local governments.<\/p>\n \u201cThey raised that at the meeting. And I asked them, the guidelines are to use the party people to do the job. We cannot hire or take people that are not from the party. But they can also give us 20 persons each from the party people that they believed will do justice to them. And they provided lists of 20 persons who we incorporated into returning officers.<\/p>\n Also Read:\u00a0\u2018You Can\u2019t Win Ekiti Governorship Poll\u2019 \u2014 PDP Groups Tackle Ayu Over Primary Election<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThis was communicated in the early morning to them because they sent their list very late, and that was what even delayed us that night. But we managed to incorporate all the 20 people they each sent to us to participate in the exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n Governor Badaru who said the primary was peacefully conducted in line with the party\u2019s guideline, however, said that results of 11 wards were cancelled due to gross malpractice that characterised the primaries in the affected areas.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no challenge in the whole process. People came out and voted for the candidates they wanted, and it has been relatively peaceful in the 166 wards.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd when you have issues with only 11 wards, mark you, we have also checked, the number of registered voters in the 11 wards can\u2019t upset the margin of lead by the winner.<\/p>\n \u201cIt then means that we declare the election conclusive. Because if we say let us do a re-run, the margin of victory is far beyond the number of cancelled wards.\u201d<\/p>\n He advised the defeated aspirants to join hands with the winner, reminding them that he had told all the aspirants and other stakeholders that power comes from God.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Badaru Abubakar Abubakar Mohammed Badaru, chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governorship Primary Election in Ekiti State, has stated that no contestant boycotted the party\u2019s shadow election held in the state on Thursday. Recall that\u00a0before the primaries, seven aspirants\u00a0complained that party members close to the governor were chosen to act as returning officers in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-920556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}