As part of efforts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to reposition for the next elections, the party Friday said the election of its presidential candidate and elected candidates would be done from the ward level and not at the national convention but through open balloting.
National Publicity Secretary of the Party, Olisa Metuh disclosed this when he received the former chairman of the National Patriotic Party of Ghana, Peter Mac Manu at the party’s national secretariat “We intend to elect our presidential candidate starting from Ward level. We are going to apply Option A4 in electing our presidential candidates. It is not going to be restricted to presidential election but others like governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives and all, everybody would be elected from the ward level. People would have to queue up behind the candidates of their choice. This proposed amendments have been sent to the state chapters for their inputs in line with our desire to have peoples opinion. We are going to change our system to be that our presidential candidate would be voted for by all party members in the country. It would be done at the ward level, we would no longer elect presidential candidate at the national convention. It would now be for every party member to vote for whoever would be our presidential candidate. Whoever would vie for our presidential ticket, would have to tour the entire country before he can be elected. This is part of the reform we are coming up with. Basically, this would be the last convention where we would have people to be elected at the national convention. We are taking the party back to the Nigerian people”.
Metuh said the reform being proposed was contained in the recommendation of senator Ike Ekweremadu’s committee recommendation on how to reform and reposition the party which will be presented to members of the party at its forthcoming convention in Portharcourt.
