Ekiti APC bars members from patronising guber aspirants

THE All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State has restricted its members from ‘unnecessary’ fraternising with the party’s governorship aspirants.

The party gave the order at its secretariat in Ado Ekiti, on Thursday, when a chieftain of Ekiti APC, Mr Duran Adesua, visited the office to unveil his intent to pick the party’s 2018 governorship ticket in the state.

The deputy chairman of the party in the state MrsKemiOlaleye, hinted that the State Working Committee (SWC) had barred its members from hobnobbing with any of the governorship ambition ahead of 2018 poll.

Olaleye warned those she said were tagging some members of the party as ‘decampees’ to desist from such, stating that,”APC has only one united family.”

She said: “All the contestants are our children. The SWC in Ekiti will be fair to all. We will treat everybody as equals because no law in the country bars anybody from joining any political party of his choice.Even Governor (Ayodele) Fayose can join APC, but it is only that we don’t want a character like him in APC.”

Addressing Adesua and other intending aspirants, she said: “No aspirant must lobby SWC members; rather go and lobby the delegates. That is where you can get your votes.”

Adesua, a commissioner in the administration of former Governor Niyi Adebayo, told the party leaders that the APC could dislodge the PDP in Ekiti in 2018, if the primary election “is allowed to throw up a credible candidate that has grassroots appeal.”

According to Adesua, “the reason the APC lost in 2014 was that there was a disconnect between the government of that time and the people. The citizens and government must be on the same page and this is the reason why we must pick a candidate that is loved by the people.”

Adesua, who hails from OmuoEkiti in Ekiti East Local Government Area, appealed “to the leadership of the party to be fair to all contestants at the primary, so that we can have a formidable candidate that can defeat the PDP.

“In voting at the primary, the delegates must think of a candidate who has the potentials, who understands the problems and the people. I have been civil servant and I never imagined salaries being owed for three months and this I believe can’t happen under a people-oriented governor.”

He lambasted Governor Fayose for making a show of his account with Zenith Bank, saying it was “appalling and disparaging to Ekiti’s value of honour and integrity for Governor Fayose to have gone to the bank and made  withdrawals from a controversial accounts that had attracted national attention when salaries and pensions were not regularly paid for the past six months.”