Dr. Patrick Dakum, popular APC aspirant shows dismay over the APC primaries which took place at Langfield, 26th May, 2022
Dr. Patrick Dakum said that the goal of going into the contest for Governorship was born out of a very deep passion for Plateau State, out of a deep passion for inclusiveness in the governance of the state, out the deep passion to ensure that you don’t throw away the bathing water with the baby, meaning that every government that has come out on the Plateau has excellent point and excellent things that they have done, therefor for them the wanted to take the best practices only from the past government and consolidate them into a program that they will use an outcome drilling implementation process in other to move development faster than what it is
He also went further to state that for him as a child of God, the destiny of Plateau and the destiny of us as individuals is in the hands of God and so for him circumstances do not change what comes out of the inside
He made an adage saying “if you shake a bottle that contents a coke it is coke that would come out, and if you shake a bottle with water, it is water that would come out, so if you have joy inside if you shake that person that is what would come out and that is why some couple of people have been saying even after the event you are not looking depressed that they are expecting his to cry but he said the only cry is that the cry that if we are not careful, development on the Plateau will be taken 10years backwards as a result of we ourselves using our own hands to truncate development”
Talking about the Primaries, over 283 people came together to put up the funds to purchase the Gubernatorial form for him at the rate of N50M, after which they went for clearance and screening which was successful and commendable by him
The first issue they started having was the issue of who is actually a delegate, and how is a delegate supposed to be produced, they were told that the delegate were going to be produced according to the guidelines through an elective process in the various wards
They were further told that it is better to now use delegates that were elected for a particular election which was to elect the state officials of the party whose roles were expired but if the community want those people they can re-affirm them but change those the need to change to reflect the constitution of the party which is making sure there are two women
They asked for the list of delegates, because the needed to know the people involved in the process but they were then told by some of their supporters that the delegate were going to be accommodated by the government
He tried his best and met some of the delegates because he has the courage and confidence, being one of the candidates that has gone round the 17 LGAs twice and met with APC members drown from all the wards
During the primaries he noticed that the accreditation of delegates was not as seamless, because they could not identify who the real delegates are
They were giving rules that any delegates that comes can take a piece of paper and write the name of the candidate he wants, if he or she doesn’t know how to write, they can call the attention of the agents to assist them write the name or the can just call it out, the local government that came first, only two people were able to read and write, showing the reflection of the level of illiteracy rate in that place
He went further to state that there was a lot of intimidation, local government chairmen were present, and that the pattern continues with a lot delegates claiming they don’t know how to read and write.
At that point he realised that the process will not produce a transparent result and he decided to walk out of the premises with some other aspirants after which the file a complaint, a protest letter to the appeal committee
He concluded by saying that the Primaries was definitely compromised, and that they awaits the verdict of the appeal committee before the take it up from there.
