Odo Ijere: NDC Party Primaries And Its Toxic Fallouts

The reckless and inordinate handling of NDC party primaries is beginning to take its toll on the preparedness of the party to carry the enormous responsibility of the people driven nationwide democratic movement to rescue Nigerian from the illegitimate government of Tinubu and the APC.

The poor handling of the primaries by greedy party officials is constituting a dent to the good intentions of Peter Obi, Kwankwaso and the ordinary Nigerians who bestowed on them the trust and mandate to lead the ballot revolution to oust Tinubu’s government in 2027.

At this stage of the simmering conflicts of interest between the people’s movement and inordinate party officials of NDC, I do not know whether to call it the misplacement of the people’s trust or outright betrayal of the people’s cause. Either of these opinions does not augur well for the struggle to enthrone proper democracy in the country.

The exercise of the party primaries were tainted with corruption, bribery, lack of capacity on the part of Exco/NEC leaders, incompetence, Imposition of self conceited state chapter leaders, improper state LG/State congresses, poor coordination of entire exercise, adoption of list not driven by primaries events, and so on and so forth.

At the top of this debauchery of crisis management of the internal party democratic process is an alleged extortion of aspirants of large sums of money with no guarantee of a party ticket. Some now have alleged to have been stripped of sums of N20 million and above in the name of party support donations and still wount have the ticket of the party. What else do we call this than outright extortion.

Many aspirants who have been waiting and waiting for a shortlist of their names after spending large sums of money now want to approach the courts to seek justice. This is where the issues get really hot for NDC and its undemocratic internal processes. The actionability of these illegal donations or extortion of aspirants is the gravaman that may spell criminality in which internal party issues may not be rightfully invoked at the court.

If you don’t plan to give your ticket to an individual, why take as much as N20 million from him as a so-called party donation? Why send someone to primaries after you have sucked N20 million from him as party support? This can be interpreted as obtaining by falls pretense and actionable by the anti corruption units of the government.

NDC must thread softly to navigate the treacherous waters of Tinubu, APC, INEC and the Judiciary waiting in the wings.

Dr. Engr. Odo Ijere (Okpotemba Ohafia), an NDC major stakeholder from Abia State.