Yesterday, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held her Guber Primaries just a few days after the APC guber primaries which threw up Akinwumi Ambode as the party’s flag bearer for the 2015 elections.
Unlike the APC primaries where there were 12 candidates in the running and all candidates seemed to have some degree of popularity to win the ticket, the PDP guber primaries was largely seen as a two horse race.
On the one hand, PDP’s 2007 flag bearer for Lagos state as well as the immediate former minister of defense, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro was battling against PDP new entrant Jimi Agbaje, a pharmacist, who is not a new figure on the Nigerian political scene.
Perhaps the political writing was on the wall for Musiliu Obanikoro when a few days ago, the PDP’s Elders council tagged him as unelectable aspirant.
According to one of the leaders of the council Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe;
“We will never pick him, we will never return to Babylon. We will do what the electorate want. We will never, never, never pick him,” Ogunlewe said.
“We will not vote for him, never. The leadership has agreed that it would not subject the people of Lagos State to that kind of impunity again, never. Never, because we are thinking of the electorate, a lot of us; and a party that does not think of the electorate is a foolish party. And what are the electorate saying? You as part of the electorate in this state, which type of governor do you want to work with? You are not going to say no, no you don’t care; which school will your children attend?
In yesterday’s guber primaries yesterday, Jimi Agbaje polled 432 votes as against the 346 by Obanikoro. The other aspirants, Babatunde Gbadamosi got 21 votes; Tokunbo Kamson, 46 votes and Adedeji Doherty, 21 votes.
There was some controversy after the votes were counted as the Chairman of the electoral commission had earlier announced that there were 806 delegates. 863 votes were counted.
As resistance by some groups began, policemen stormed the venue and started firing shots in the air.
Senator Musiliu Obanikoro yesterday described the guber primaries as a sham, he took to twitter and tweeted;
“The whole electoral exercise was a sham. We will fight it and ensure that the right thing is done
I have never seen an election where ballot papers are counted before sorting. The whole process was compromised and predetermined. As far as we are concerned, there was no election today, hence no result. No results should have been counted the moment number of votes cast exceeded number of accredited delegates,” he said.
He vowed to fight on until the necessary corrections are made while urging his supporters to be law-abiding.”