More crisis tears Benue APC apart as Oyigeya, McDickson, Audu, others reject congresses

A political pressure group of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State South Senatorial district known as, The Like Minds, has rejected the conduct of the party congresses in the zone.

Chairman of the group, Dr. Matthias Oyigeya, said at a press conference in Makurdi that the conduct of ward, local government and state congresses in the state, especially in the zone C Idoma speaking area was worrisome.

He said what took place during the exercise was a total deviation from the directive of the national working committee of the APC, stressing that the entire congresses were marred by impunity, lack of internal democracy and imposition of candidates.

“The party members who were interested in contesting various party positions were denied the opportunity of exercising their franchise. For instance, Mr. Noah McDickson, Hon. Bernard Ochepa and Hon. Benson Audu paid for forms for the state chairmanship position while Engr. Okpe Onah paid for the vice chairmanship position for zone C; they were all denied the forms,” he said.

Oyigeya added that in spite of the anomalies, there had not been any conscious effort to initiate reconciliatory moves in order to pacify the aggrieved members of the party as he further informed that letters of complaints were written to leaders of the party in the state but there was no response.

He explained that the group’s objective was aimed at partnering with the party’s executives to win the 2019 elections in the zone currently dominated by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), adding that the more the group tried to render its service, the more its efforts were rebuffed.

Also, speaking, McDickson, disclosed that he paid for the nomination form on May 4 but was not given the form on the guise that it was not available even after he visited the party’s apex office in Abuja and was asked to return to his state to obtain the form readily available there.

McDickson posited that even on the day of the election, he and the others who were denied the forms paid for were still told that the forms were not available as he emphasised that the decision of the appeal panel that the Benue congress be revisited was not attended to.

He however noted that, “if nothing was done about the matter, we (himself and other aggrieved members) will seek legal redress. Even our money was not refunded to us.”

Most members of The Like Minds consisted of those prominent PDP politicians of zone C who defected to the APC shortly after the 2015 general elections and during the build up towards the February 20 Benue South rerun election in the state.