The Peoples Democratic Party has cleared 11 aspirants for its Osun State governorship primary scheduled to hold on July 17.
But the party said it would prefer that aspirants meet and agree on a consensus candidate among themselves.
However, it said if that failed, it would organise a primary that would produce the party’s candidate for the September 22 governorship election.
A member of the party’s Screening Committee, who is also the Deputy National Secretary of the party, Dr Emmanuel Agboh, stated this in Abuja on Wednesday while addressing the aspirants.
Agboh said, “Let me state this very clearly that the Peoples Democratic Party under the leadership of Prince Uche Secondus will not compromise, in all the contests beginning from the election of the three-man delegate team and to the state congress that will produce one of you as the standard bearer of the party.
“We urge all of you to engage in meaningful discussion and if you are unable to harmonise, the leadership of the party will not fail in organising a free and fair primary, just as we did in Ekiti State.
“When we were going to Ekiti, maybe because we have a sitting governor, people thought we would bend the rules, but we stood our ground and organised the best primary in recent time.
“To us in the PDP, the definition of leadership in its context is sincerity of purpose, candidates that play by the rules.
“We are not going to organise a hitch-free primary for or against an individual, we do it because it is needful so that we can win Osun State.
“This is a golden opportunity for you all instead of about 300,000 members of the PDP in Osun State to decide who becomes the party’s candidate.
“Eleven of you should go and decide who becomes the party’s candidate, because we are sure that from the 11 of you here today one of you is the next governor of Osun State.”
