Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker/Extra-Ordinary National Convention Planning Committee has finally opened up on the failure of the party to win the just concluded Edo State governorship election, blaming it on power of incumbency and controversial party primaries.
A member of the APC Caretaker committee representing the youth, Ismail Ahmed, who spoke on the Edo governorship election, insisted that the party is however battle-ready to avoid the mistake of the Edo election in the forthcoming Ondo governorship poll, describing it as a do or die.
Fielding questions after the meeting of APC Social Media and Influencers held at the party’s national secretariat on Monday, he said that the party is going to have a postmortem to find out how the it found itself in the kind of situation.
Asked his take on Edo, he said: “Are you calling that performance dismal? Remember we ran against an incumbent governor and everybody knows the history of Edo governorship primary and there were a lot of circumstances we could not explain.
“We thought we had covered the ground fully well but there was a blind side we didn’t see. However, the party has not officially done a postmortem which we intend to do this week. The National Assembly is very busy, we are going to call a postmortem to know how far and how we find ourselves in this kind of situation,” he noted.
He Aadded: “It is very disheartening for us as members of the party that for the first time since 2015, the party does not have a single representation in the South-South in terms of state, that is something I am absolutely unhappy about.
“For the first time, our party was the only party that has no representation in all the states in the South-South, except PDP in 2003 when President Obasanjo wanted to contest. Because in 1999, PDP had no representation in the South-West but for the first time, the APC had representation in all the geo-political zones since 2015 but now, we have lost it.
“We have to work hard to regain it even though we won election fair and square in 2019; however, that is something we can’t take for granted any longer,” he said.
On the preparedness of the party for the Ondo governorship election, he said:
“As we go to Ondo State, we know that APC did not win the Presidential election in Ondo State. So, Ondo is also going to be very dicey, but the governor has done most of the reconciliation that he needed to do based on what the reconciliation committee recommended to him.
“We are not going to take anything for granted anymore, we are not going to be sitting on our oars again, we are going to go out and fight to make sure that we retain that state (Ondo).