Some senators are threatening to leave the ruling All Progressives Congress should the party fail to adopt direct primaries for the 2019 elections.
Some of the lawmakers who spoke with Premium Times warned that the party will experience mass defection if it fails to adopt the direct primaries.
They alleged that some governors are applying pressure on the national leadership of the party to adopt indirect primaries to choose candidates for the 2019 elections.
If the party adopts the usual indirect primary, the senators said, the party will lose its majority status at the Senate. For them, the only way to reclaim leadership of the senate is an assurance of direct primaries by the party.
Direct primaries involves the participation of all party members in the selection of party candidates while indirect primaries involves use of delegates, often party leaders at local levels and political appointees as well as elected officials, to elect party candidates.
The APC used the direct primaries to elect its governorship candidate in Osun for next month’s governorship election. Prior to that, it often used the indirect primaries system.
Controversy over the choice of primaries for the party started in July when the chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, declared the party will adopt direct primary method in Osun State in choosing a candidate ahead of the state’s governorship election.
Oshiomhole said the method remains the “most democratic way of handling the primary.”
The party went ahead employing the method to choose its candidate, Gboyega Oyetola, but the process did not go down well with some of the aspirants.
Prominent among the voices against the method was the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Lasun Yusuf, who was runner up in the primary.
