Barely two months to the Ondo State governorship election, there are strong indications that the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party is facing another round of crisis over the choice of Mr. Gboluga Ikengboju as running of the party’s flag bearer for the election, Mr. Eyitayo Jegede.
Ikengboju, a member of the House of Representatives, representing Okitipupa/Irele Federal Constituency, was announced by Jegede as his running mate, via Twitter handle on Monday. The PDP candidate said the choice of his running mate was divine.
However, Ikengboju’s choice has not gone down well with some members of the party. Those in this school of thought are threatening to withhold their support for the candidate.
One of the PDP aspirants who lost to Jegede during the party primary, Mr. Banji Okunomo, has expressed displeasure over the choice of Ikengboju as running mate.
His campaign organisation made its feeling known in a communique issued at the end of a meeting on Thursday.
The communique read in part, “The BBO Executive session views with emphatic disapproval and absolute sense of rejection the undemocratic and unpopular dimension in which Jegede chose to foist the nomination of Ikengboju on the PDP as his running mate in stiff defiance to all wise counsels to the contrary portraying him as a rigidly conservative person that will always override superior majority view.”
They said a choice of one of those who contested the PDP primary and lost should have been better.
A former deputy governorship candidate of the party, Mr. John Mafo, while congratulating Ikengboju on his selection said Ikengboju’s choice was a good one.
Mafo said “Being a man under authority I am duty-bound to respect the choice of our candidate. Moreover, I am using this medium to call on all and sundry to let us put the issues of the primary and choice of deputy governorship candidate behind us and work for the success of our party in the forthcoming election.”