Protesters storm APC secretariat in Ekiti, ask chairman to step down

About 11 APC local government areas chairmen — with tens of party members— stormed the party secretariat in Ajilosun area in Ado-Ekiti, on Monday morning to protest the disrupted governorship primary election.

One of the chairmen who spoke with TheCable said they have lost confidence in the Jide Awe led executive and had inaugurated a caretaker committee to take over.

Awe is the chairman of the party.

“We discovered that there has been lot of infractions on the part of Jide Awe led secretariat of the party,” he said.

“One of the allegations is that Jide Awe collected money to disrupt the peaceful election conducted on Saturday. As a matter of fact, it was revealed that one of the executives was with the miscreants that led others to snatch ballot boxes on the day, the person of Demola Adewuse also known as Ooosha.

“He is the assistant youth leader representing Ekiti central. Information has it that it was coordinated by our own supposed former PRO, Olatunbosun Taiwo, who was giving miscreants tags to enter and penetrate into the hall and disrupt the peaceful election in order to satisfy their inordinate ambition and the sinister that they have.”

He added that the party executives were trying to force a candidate on them.

“We have a congress today having 11 chairmen in attendance and our members across the 16 local governments here today,” he said.

“All we are saying is that Jide Awe-led executive can no longer lead us and that we need people of integrity and impeccable character to lead us in the state and in our party. We also demand that that election must be concluded immediately. No cancellation. We say no to cancellation. But not under the supervision of Awe any longer who is already biased and whose hands have been soiled.

“Apart from these infractions, there has been mismanagement of funds on his part. Ask him that happened to the N100m raised by our stakeholders. We raised that money for the management of our office. Our office is dilapidated. Nothing is happening in the party. Since Awe came on board for the fourth time, nothing has been happening and that is why we are saying no to his reign in the party. And that is why we have set up a caretaker committee to oversee the affairs of our party till another congress will hold in August 2018. We are saying today that we are passing a vote of no confidence on Jide Awe-led executive.”

He argued that by virtue of article 21 of their constitution, the congress has the power to set up a caretaker committee.