Adamawa: PDP to hold another primary in Oct

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will hold another governorship primary next month to pick a candidate for the 2015 elections.

The primary will take place shortly after the October 11 by-election which will be contested by PDP’s Umaru Fintiri, who is the acting governor, and APC’s Bindo Jibrilla.

The by-election became necessary following the impeachment of Vice Admiral Murtala Nyako and his deputy, Bala Ngilari.

Fintiri will, however, not participate in next month’s primary, having agreed with the PDP leadership that he would only serve out the tenure of Nyako if he wins the October 11 poll.

By law, whoever is elected now will occupy office till May 29, 2015.

Although Fintiri is not constitutionally barred from contesting for governorship next year, he has reportedly reached an agreement with his party not to take part.

The PDP national secretary, Prof. Wale Oladipo, told the media in Abuja on Tuesday that the agreement was reached with the party leadership and aspirants who contested the Sept. 6 Adamawa primaries.

“Whoever wins now will not insist to contest in 2015; I can assure of that because that is our agreement,” he admitted.

Although he admitted that the agreement was not documented, he said “it was solid, robust, voluntary and concrete with the consent of all party stakeholders in Adamawa”.

Oladipo added that as secretary of the committee that broker the agreement, measures had been put in place to ensure that whoever won the bye-election would not contest in 2015.

“And in any case, the primaries for 2015 will take place in about a month time,” he said.

He said that eight aspirants voluntarily withdrew from the race on the ground that they would prefer to wait and contest the 2015 election.

He, however, debunked insinuations that the party leadership was using the agreement to deny the state acting governor from contesting in 2015.

“The governor himself was the person that said ‘if I win, I will not contest’, so nobody is taking anything from him.

“It will be morally wrong for whoever wins now to contest the 2015 election.

“And you should know that in PDP, we are a family; there is no domineering dictator; here we all discussed and reached an agreement.

“And we move out as a team and that is what we are going to do in Adamawa,” he said.

Oladipo said that the party’s appeal panel would look at the petitions of some aspirants on the conduct of the Adamawa primaries, to address them.

“They have a right to file petitions, but the appeal panel would look at it dispassionately and address it as the need arises,” he said.