Party allegedly directs candidates to submit names of polling agents to national secretariat
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The National Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) may have directed some of its candidates for the next year’s general elections to submit the names of their proposed party agents directly to the national secretariat.
The move, findings revealed, represents a departure from the party’s usual practice, under which state chapters are responsible for compiling and submitting the names of party agents to the national secretariat in Abuja.
The development was attributed to the internal wrangling in some state chapters of the party, especially where the preferred candidates of the governors did not make the party’s list of candidates.
It was reliably gathered that the party’s NWC adopted the strategy to forestall any plot to betray the party and its candidates during the elections.
A source disclosed that the arrangement was being applied mainly in states where the NWC suspected that the governors were sponsoring candidates on the platforms of other political parties against APC candidates.
A group, the Oodua Progressive Youths League (OPYL), had alleged that some governors whose preferred candidates lost the party’s National Assembly primaries directed them to seek tickets from opposition parties and contest against APC candidates in the 2027 elections.
According to a statement signed by the group’s General Secretary, Wale Abdulwaheed, the governors had also allegedly reached agreements with some opposition parties on the selection of polling agents for the elections.
The statement further alleged that the affected governors had directed candidates they sponsored on opposition platforms to nominate their loyalists, who remain members of the APC, as agents for the ruling party.
The group claimed that the names of the agents would subsequently be submitted to the APC national secretariat as the party’s recognised agents in their respective states.
Many political leaders had also pointed accusing fingers at Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa of Ondo State, alleging that he was sponsoring candidates for the National Assembly election in other political parties.
Aiyedatiwa has, however, denied directing any candidate to contest against APC candidates on the platform of other political parties, describing those accusing him of anti-party activities as “naysayers, blackmailers and slanderers.”
The governor said, “I have zero tolerance for anti-party activities. I have never engaged in anti-party activities in my life.”