Group says APC Ekiti aims to manipulate membership register

The South-West Agenda for Tinubu 2023 presidential ambition within the All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State on Saturday raised the alarm over alleged plot by the party leadership in the state to manipulate membership register.

SWAGA National Chairman, Senator Adedayo Adeyeye, said the APC, led by its state chairman, Paul Omotosho, had moved the membership registers across the 177 wards in the state to the Government House.

He said, “Our findings confirmed that what they are planning to do is to remove members of SWAGA and those loyal to other interested aspirants from our registers to give undeserved victory to their anointed aspirant at the primary.”

Adeyeye, in a ‘press release’ made available in Ado Ekiti, accused Governor Kayode Fayemi of coercing the party leadership in the state to perpetrate the act “over palpable fever surrounding the possibility of President Muhammadu Buhari signing the direct primary law to mandate application of direct primaries by parties.”

The former minister urged the Mai Mala Buni-led APC Caretaker Committee and Extra Ordinary Convention Planning Committee to caution the State Working Committee, saying, “We appeal to our national leaders to take immediate action on this matter. Election rigging within a party is a fertile ground for crisis of monumental proportion to spring up and escalate into a full scale division.

“We are loyal party members and we want progress for this party; but it will be a great disservice for us to keep quiet in the face of this unsavory act. This will not help our party and national leadership who are working hard to reposition our party,” Adeyeye said.

But the state APC Publicity Secretary, Segun Dipe, who described the allegation as comical, unfounded and spurious, said the APC was even “ready to accommodate the worst of enemies to shore up its membership base.”

Dipe said, “We are not going to deregister anybody. Ekiti APC is not planning anything of such and our plan is to register more members and not to reduce the ones we have currently. All our documents are intact and they are in the right places.

“Senator Adeyeye is a lawyer and he ought to know that the issue of direct primary has not been signed into law by the President. It is premature to start raising this baseless allegation now.”

Suzan O./NAN