The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje has appealed to aggrieved governorship aspirants in the just concluded Ondo state party primary to drop their differences and work for the party’s victory in November 16, 2024 gubernatorial poll.
The National Chairman made the appeal to the aspirants at the party headquarters in Abuja on Thursday.
Recall that the Alhaji Usman Ododo’s committee declared the incumbent governor of the state, Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa winner of the shadow election, having polled 48,569 to beat other aspirants to the ticket.
Some of the aggrieved aspirants however petitioned the party over the outcome of the exercise.
In a bid to resolve the disagreement, the National Chairman invited all the aspirants for a reconciliation meeting.
Speaking, Ganduje urged them to place the interest of the party above personal interest, unite and ensure that the APC remain the ruling party in Ondo state.
Ganduje said, “I have to thank you for honouring our invitation in the shortest time and also considering the emotional distress as a result of the primary conducted in few days.
“Since we are all democrats, we are used to ups and downs in politics. The purpose of this dialogue is to appeal to you. The purpose is not to dwell on what has happened or what has not happened. What is correct, what is not correct. If we dwell on that then it will lead to what we called, ‘too much analysis leads to paralysis’.
“There are professors amongst us, lawyers, some are engineers, even the female gender is being accommodated. if we dwell on that, we, who are less educated, the controversy will not cover us, considering the galaxy of politicians who are here.
“I am sure your prayer is that our party, your party should be the ruling party in Ondo state. I think this is our common focus. It is already a ruling party, our prayer is that it should continue to be a ruling party in Ondo State. So you see, we are here to appeal to you so that we succeed in maintaining this state as APC state.
“I appeal to you, we are all practitioners in this game, in this politics, in this agenda. If you recall, I contested for governorship in 1999, I lost I couldn’t become a governor until after 16 years. I was patient enough. I was praying and I eventually became a governor after 16 sixteen years. So I can’t call you that you are lost aspirants. You are aspirants that will be successful tomorrow.
The APC National Working Committee (NWC) and the aspirants however went into a closed door meeting with the aspirants.
