By DADA AYOKHAI
The Edo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party , PDP, has resolved to use performance of the party at the ward of an intended aspirants during the just concluded Edo state House of Assembly elections as the basis for qualification to contest for either the chairmanship or councillorship positions on the party platform.
The the party’s State Executive Council SEC which is the second highest organ of the party set the new stringent condition to be met by the aspirants during the recently held meeting where the governor and his deputy were in attendance.
Apart from laying down the ground rules for the aspirants, the party’s SEC also agreed that it would no longer be business as usual.
Consequently, the SEC members according to source, agreed that there was an urgent need to tighten the noose around indolence among the rank and file and that the next best time to do such is to use the forthcoming council poll as a test-run.
The chairmanship aspirants under the new criteria must have won their units and ward during the last Edo House of Assembly election and also be untainted.
The untainted by the party means, that the aspirants must not be seen to have worked against the party in past elections.
This simply means that an aspirant with any record of anti-party pre-elections will be either shown the way out or disqualified
In addition, aspirants for the position of Ward councilor must have delivered their respective units at the last Edo state House of Assembly election .
The new set of conditions released by the party may force many of the aspirants to go back to the drawing board to conduct a thorough review of the feasibility or otherwise of their ambition.
It sure looks like a tough call but these guidelines or the new set of “election manual” as pundits have rightly termed it, will certainly cause estrangement and disaffection among the legion of hopefuls.
