28th January, 2011
Oyo State Chapter of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has defied the court order restraining it from conducting re-run primary election into the Oyo Central Senatorial district.
The party has gone ahead to organise the election in Oyo township.
As at the time of filing this report, P.M.NEWS gathered that the re-run election had begun at Durbar Hotel, Oyo where the delegates have taken their seats.
P.M.NEWS gathered that accreditation of delegates commenced by 1pm while the voting followed immediately.
Vying for the PDP ticket to contest the 2011 poll in the district are: Senator Jumoke Akinjide who won the senatorial ticket in a primary conducted two weeks ago, General Raji Rasaq who lost to Jumoke and Senate Leader, Senator Teslim Folarin.
Investigation revealed that the re-run was ordered following the petition written by Senator Folarin to the PDP headquarters in Abuja protesting that the primary was conducted when he was in prison. He asked the party to conduct a fresh election for all the aspirants in that district.
Investigations further revealed that the re-run election is a ploy to hijack the ticket from Jumoke to give it to Folarin.
P.M.News gathered that the leadership of PDP threatened Jumoke for getting an injunction against the party, asking her to withdraw the suit against the party if she does not want to be punished.
She was further asked not to serve the PDP headquarters with the judgment if she does not want to be tagged as a member who is involved in anti-party activities.
Yesterday, Jumoke had approached the Federal High court seeking that the re-run primary election fixed for today should not hold.
Meanwhile, following the public holiday declared today in Oyo State by Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala for the residents to participate in the on-going voter registration exercise, all government establishments were under lock and key.
Among the places visited by our correspondent which were closed for the exercise were: the Oyo State governor’s office, Agodi, SUBEB and local government secretariats.
Also closed down for business activities are banks.
However, due to the public holiday, the registration centres have been flooded with people who want to register as each centres visited have over 100 people queuing to register. In most of the centres, numbers were issued to people as they come in order to maintain orderliness.
Most of the INEC officials who spoke with P.M.NEWS said that the teething problems that would not make them to be effective and efficient are still there.
One of them said, “The machines are still mal-functioning. At times, it will just stop working and we have to shut down and wait for one hour or more before we start it again. It might not work more than one hour when it will stop again and we still have to shut it down again.
“This is one of the reasons we cannot register much. At times, we don’t register more than 20 in a day. There was a day that we registered just three persons and the machine packed up and that was how we ended that day’s job.â€
Another registration officer in another centre said: “We don’t even have ink again for people to thumb print. Materials are insufficient.â€
—Gbenro Adesina/Ibadan
