Some aggrieved leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ekiti State including former Governor Segun Oni are currently being pressurised by the All Progressives Congress to dump their party and join the ruling party.
A competent source within the PDP in the state told our correspondent on Sunday that a negotiation team was set up by the APC to woo Oni and other leaders of the PDP who are aggrieved over the emergence of former Governor, Ayo Fayose as the candidate of the PDP in the June 21 governorship election.
The team was said to have held meetings with most of those targeted to be brought into the ruling party.
It will be recalled that while Fayose was declared the winner of the PDP primary conducted in Ado Ekiti on Saturday, March 22, the 13 aggrieved aspirants elected Senator Gbenga Aluko as their consensus candidate on Friday, March 28. One of the 13 aspirants was said not to have participated in the poll which produced Aluko, but another aspirant, Dayo Adeyeye had also said that just five out of the 12 aspirants participated in the process that produced Aluko.
The source added that a former Secretary of the PDP in the South-West, Chief Chief Ropo Adesanya, was also among those already visited by the APC negotiation team.
Another source said that the APC team held a meeting late Saturday night with 11 local government chairmen of the PDP, 12 secretaries, 11 treasurers, 10 women leaders, and nine youth leaders of the party in the state.
The meeting, which was said to have been held at an undisclosed location in Ado Ekiti, was to discuss with the PDP leaders who were not happy with the emergence of Fayose as the PDP candidate.
Although, the PDP leaders were said not to have committed themselves to joining the party, they were reported to have said that they would wait for the pronouncement of President Goodluck Jonathan on who was the candidate of the party for the election.
Efforts by our correspondent to confirm the development from Oni were unsuccessful. Calls put across to his telephone line were not answered and a text message sent to him had yet to be responded to as of the time of filing this report.
However, Adesanya, who was the PDP chairman in 2003 when Fayose defeated the then incumbent Governor Niyi Adebayo of the Alliance for Democracy, confirmed to our correspondent that politicians from the APC as well as those from the Labour Party were talking to him.
Also, a former governorship aspirant of the PDP in Irepodun/Ifelodun, Mr. Moses Adekunle, while tactically confirming the move, told our correspondent on the telephone that the President should make a proclamation on the emergence of two candidates for the party.
Copyright PUNCH.
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