By; Jacob Onjewu Dickson
As the battle for the replacement for Governor Adams Oshiomhole heats up in Edo State, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is wooing female aspirants with free normination and expression of interest forms.
New Nigerian gathered this from the time-table ahead of the party’s primaries, reeled out by APC’s National Organising Secretary, Senator Osita Izunaso, who said that the governorship primary election will hold in Benin City on Saturday, June 18, 2016.
While the nomination forms are selling for N5m, the expression of interest is pegged at N500, 000 for male aspirants only as the bonanza for women was announced.
“In line with the Electoral Act and the party guidelines as well as interface with the INEC timetable, the party has approved the timetable for the governorship primaries in Edo state.
“We will start on Monday, May 16 with a stakeholders meeting in Abuja. By Tuesday, May 17, the sale of forms will commence. That will be available until June 3, 2016. By June 6, we expect all the aspirants who obtained the forms to have filled them and submitted the forms at the party’s national headquarters in Abuja.
“On Wednesday, June 8, the screening exercise will be conducted for all the aspirants who bought the forms. The exercise will continue until June 12. If there are issues arising from the screening exercise, the Appeal Committee will look at them from Monday, June 13 to June 15. The governorship primary election will hold in Benin City on Saturday, June 18, 2016. The Election Appeal Committee will hold its sittings between Monday, June 20 and June 23, 2016,” he explained.
On the crisis rocking the party in Edo, he said that Fact-Finding and Reconciliation Committee has been set up to address the aggrieved parties.
“The committee has two weeks to finish their job. It commences its job on Monday. They will move to Benin on Wednesday (today). They would have rounded off by next week. The party will look at their report and take a decision. We have accommodated the period of reconciliation in the proposed timetable.
He assured that the party is ahead of the situation, that was why they set-up the Fact-Finding and Reconciliation Committee.
“We believe that before we get to the point of primaries, which is up to a month from now, everything about misunderstanding in that state will have been sorted out. The issues are not as serious as we have been made to understand. Certainly, it will be sorted out,” he assured.
