Chidi Samuel|
The All Progressives Congress rose from its NEC meeting on Thursday and adopted direct primaries to choose its presidential candidate for the 2019 election.
The ruling party, however, declined to adopt the system for other elections with the proviso that states can adopt indirect primaries provided they write to the national executive.
Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, made the disclosure while addressing newsmen at the end of Thursday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the ruling party.
According to Lalong, the meeting discussed issues around “guidelines of the election, mode of election, funding and the necessity for unity within the party after the scale of defection here and there.
Lalong said, “The issue of mode of election, we all decided that for the (presidential) election, we are going into a direct primaries; but for other elections, there are two options.
“But the general option is that we go in for direct option but any state that has a problem and will want to deviate is at liberty to write and following the normal process, with a resolution from the state executive to the national exco.
“The constitution of the party provides for either direct, indirect or consensus but for the presidential election, we all agreed that we will adopt direct primaries for the presidential election.
“Also a recommendation was made by the NWC that the other states should adopt the indirect mode, but there may be situations that this might be difficult in the state looking at their peculiarities. So if there are such difficulties they can apply following the process.”
On defections, The Plateau state governor said the party “unanimously agreed that that has not affected us much and has even tightened the party the more.”
“On the issue of funding a standing committee was set up to look at funding generally for the party,” he said.
“In respect to automatic ticket, we didn’t discuss the issue of automatic ticket. But we discussed that yes patriotic and loyal members should be rewarded but not necessarily with automatic ticket. We are saying some senators, our senators who are patriotic, who are supposed to be taken away were all kept in the party. So all states should look at and then we will find ways of rewarding them. But election is giving option to everybody to contest election.”
On coping with the issue of logistics on membership registration as it affects direct primaries, which the party has chosen for its presidential election, Lalong said the party has been assured of hitch-free registration.
“Well, we were given assurance by those doing the exercise. We have started an online registration in the different states now and we now have assurance that in the next two weeks we should be able to have all the people concluding and of course a register.
“The party gave assurance they will do their best to meet up with the deadline. But in any case, if there are difficulties the options are still given to the party, to the NWC, to come back and say it is difficult for us to do and then they may come back to another mode of election.”
The decision to jettison direct primaries in the states may anger some of the party’s lawmakers at the upper legislative chamber, some of whom earlier in the week threatened to defect from the party if the system was not adopted.
The party appeared to have moved to avert that as Kogi state governor who addressed Journalists along with Lalong assured that loyal party members will be rewarded.