Ahead of the November governorship election in Ondo State, an indication has emerged that the two leading parties in the state: the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have not released guidelines towards the conduct of shadow election that will produce the parties’ standard bearers for the election.
Investigation by Nigerian Tribune revealed that the two parties were still awaiting the guidelines and rules guiding the primaries for picking candidates.
A source within APC said “ We are still awaiting the guidelines from the National Secretariat and I can assure you that the guidelines will be released before the end of this month.
He said the party leadership recently called all the aspirants to a meeting at the party secretariat where it was resolved that they aspirants should pay N2m each as developmental fee.
The source who said though all the aspirants agreed to pay the levy however, said this might be a yardstick to prune the number of aspirants in APC. This will separate the boys from the men”.
Similarly, there were indications that the ruling PDP in the state was not in a hurry to conduct its primary.
A leader of the party in the state also said the guidelines would be issued by party secretariat in Abuja, adding “ this is not new, we know what it is going to contain and serious aspirants also know what those guidelines should be, and they are already working towards it.”
He, however, assured that the PDP primary will be free of rancour and will be crisis-free, noting that the number of aspirants for the party’s ticket could be adequately handled by PDP.
It is also believed that both APC and PDP in the state have decided not to zone the party ticket in producing the party’s flag bearer.
