Ekiti 2022: Olujimi Pulls Out Of Ekiti PDP Guber Pry

Posted by African Examiner Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria, News From The State Wednesday, January 26th, 2022

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Senator representing the Ekiti South Senatorial District, Chief Biodun Olujimi, has pulled out from the ongoing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship primary election in Ekiti State shortly before the exercise began.

Speaking with journalists in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, Olujimi stated that her decision to withdraw from the primary was caused by alleged irregularities during the accreditation of delegates.

According to the PDP chieftain, she could not be part of a political process that had removed party delegates, most of them are her supporters as the development is antithetical to the tenets of participatory democracy.

Olujimi stated that the accreditation exercise was out rightly smeared with irregularities and sabotage with the list of delegates brought by Governor Udom Emmanuel-led electoral team which according to her was allegedly doctored in favor of a particular aspirant.

She said “I pulled out because every other aspirant has full compliments of delegates from their local government. It pleased the party to give me only 12 automatic delegates in mine.

“I have six local governments in my district as a sitting senator. They gave full compliments of delegates to somebody in four of my local government. And the two that were left, including my own local government. They gave me 12 delegates out of 78.

“And in the second local government, they gave me only ten delegates. How do you go from your home with a broken hoe and then, you are going to ask the people to give their own to you to till the ground?

“I feel maybe it is because of my gender or maybe the party feels I have not done enough for it. That is why they would have done that to me.

“So, when they’ve done that to me, it didn’t make sense to continue with the process.”

Speaking on how the party arrived at giving out automatic delegates to aspirants, she said: “What happened was that for two years, we’ve been fighting over an illegal congress and somehow, a few weeks ago, they approved it for one group.

“There have been two groups that have been fighting. And we said there was no congress because it was hijacked. Two weeks ago, the party approved that one group should take all the fourteen executives, and those of us that had been fighting should wait.”

Responding to a journalist who asked if she stepped down or pulled out, she stated that she didn’t step down but only pulled out of the race, tasking her supporters to vote for any aspirant of their choice.