Ondo primaries satisfactory to diaspora community — APC Chief, Aliu

The Director-General of the Lucky Aiyedatiwa Campaign Organization Foot Soldiers Independent Council (LACO-FSIC) on Diaspora Matters, Dare Aliu, has described as false claims the irregularities in the conduct of Saturday’s governorship primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State.

Reacting to the claims of one of the aggrieved aspirants, Mr. Olusola Oke, who claimed that the election was a sham, Aliu said if Oke could not see the beauty of democracy in Saturday’s primary poll, local observers raised by non-partisan Ondo State indigenes in the Diaspora did see the beauty.

In a statement issued in Akure on Sunday, Aliu informed that he was privy to a meeting in the United States “where non-partisan indigenes of Ondo State contacted home and raised local independent observers across the 18 local government areas of the state to monitor the credibility of yesterday’s primary election.”

He said, “I personally arrived in Nigeria on Thursday as an APC member to monitor and mobilize people for the voting exercise, having joined the party recently.

 

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“But last night, I received messages from officials of the Diaspora group in the US, commending my party, the APC, for a wonderful, credible, free, and fair primary election based on all the reports obtained from their local independent observers.”

He also noted that in his Ward at Oke-Aro, Akure, the atmosphere was peaceful, as the party’s electoral officers, observers from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), security agents, and voters all played their roles as expected, without any incident.

“I, therefore, urge our party elder, Barrister Olusola Oke, to, in the spirit of sportsmanship, congratulate Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa who is the winner of the primary election and join forces with him for the bigger race, which is the general election coming up in November.”

Aliu similarly appealed to the other aspirants to form an alliance with the team of Governor Aiyedatiwa to keep the APC in power in Ondo State, for the continuation “of the good works of the party.”

He commended the Aiyedatiwa administration for putting smiles on the faces of the citizenry by paying workers’ salaries regularly, paying N35,000 palliative grant to the workers, and earmarking over N2 billion as support loan to artisans, peasant farmers, and traders.

“For a governor to have achieved all these in less than 80 days in office and to have mobilized all unpaid road contractors back to the site, then the Ondo State people need no further search for who to elect governor, come November this year,” Aliu stressed.