28th February, 2012
The majority of the over 700 delegates that participated in last Saturday’s Edo Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship primary have gone into hiding.
Information making the rounds is that the action of the delegates is because of the threat calls they have started getting from some of the defeated aspirants who felt betrayed by some of delegates.
P.M.NEWS gathered that in the course of going round the different wards and selling their programmes to the delegates, most of the aspirants gave huge sums of money to the delegates so as to commit them to voting in their favour on the day of the primary.
Not only that, some of the prominent delegates seeing the desperation exhibited by the aspirants went as far as giving the aspirants the impression that they lead a ‘cell of delegates.’ The aspirants fell for this trick and doled out large sums of money to such prominent delegates for onward transmission to their ‘cell members’.
The money ranged from N50,000 to $3,000 per delegate and in some instances $30,000 for members of a ‘cell’.
A few hours to the D-Day the aspirants and their agents made last minute calls to some of the delegates to get their reassurance that there would not be reneging on their promise.
But to the shock of some of the aspirants most of the delegates toed what was perceived as party leaders’ line while voting.
This act of ‘betrayal’ must have informed why some of the aspirants like Barrister Kenneth Imansuangbon, Professor Julius Ihonvbere and Senator Oserheimen Osunbor stormed out of the Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin where the primary was held as soon as the result was announced.
As soon as some of the defeated aspirants got home they started calling some of the delegates threatening fire and brimstone and demanding for a refund of the money they gave to them considering that the result of the primary did not reflect the ‘investment’ they (aspirants) made on each of them.
We also gathered that some of the aggrieved aspirants have sent their agents to the different areas to locate some of the delegates to at least retrieve part of the money they collected.
—Isaac Olamilekan/Benin