Ahead of today’s primary election of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to picks its candidate for Anambra State November 6 governorship election, former student activist and ex-member of the House of Representatives, Dr. Tony Nwoye, has withdrawn from the race.

The former frontline aspirant to the PDP guber ticket said he was withdrawing from the race because of the party’s decision not to use already elected delegates who emerged from a recent ward congress.

PDP had said that it would use only super delegates to pick its candidate, citing court rulings.

A Federal High Court in Abuja had dissolved the Anambra State executives of the PDP. The court also stopped the party from using delegates who were elected from ward congress earlier organised by the dissolved state EXCO.

Nwoye, in a press statement today, said the “disconcerting flurry of events in our party in the last 36 hours... should be of grave concern to every true democrat and believer in the inalienability of the rights of true party people to freely choose the party’s flagbearer in the upcoming gubernatorial elections in our beloved state, Anambra.”

According to him, he was jolted by the news of the party’s National Working Committee’s (NWC) release concerning the party’s primaries.

“In the NWC release, the entire ward level executives of our party, the L.G.A executives and State executives of our party (who, by our edicts are bona fide statutory delegates) and also the elected ad hoc delegates (3 from every ward), who emerged from the duly conducted delegate election of the party that held on 10th June, 2021 will no longer be voting in the primaries election. Instead, only a handful of automatic/super delegates whose names appeared in a made-up list will be deciding who flies the party’s flag at the Nov 6 governorship polls holding in the state,” Nwoye said.

Quoting PDP Constitution, Article 25(1), he said the party rules provides “that in the composition of the State Congress for the nomination of governorship candidate, the bulk of the members and delegates that ought to vote at the primary election are the State Executive Working Committee, the Local Government Executive Working Committee, the ward executives from all the electoral wards (all as statutory delegates) and the 3 ad hoc delegates elected in the delegates election for the purposes of the congress are to constitute the electorate at the state congress. What is at play now is that the afore-listed groups have been excluded from voting in today’s Primary Election.”

Nwoye said decision to exclude statutory and duly elected ad hoc delegates, who constitute over 94 percent of the total number of expected delegates to vote at the Primary election, means “that the primary election as is being purported will only be by a paltry 5 - 6% percent of eligible voters. There can be no doubt that this runs against the grain of the basic tenets of participatory democracy of which I am an uncompromising proponent of.”

The aspirant said owing to this development, he had consulted with his “campaign team, teeming supporters – most of who are the bedrock of our Party at the grassroots level where I belong, and my ever supportive family, and I have come to the inevitable conclusion that the process has been greatly flawed. A process that ignores the very engine room of not just our party but of democracy itself, which is the participation of the true repository of power, the people in the primary election is against the principles I hold dear in politics. Aborting the rights of the people who represent the kindle to our possible success at the election, cannot have my participation at the Primary election.

“I therefore, in standing with all the teeming excluded 3 elected ad hoc delegates, ward executives, local government, and state delegates that have been so unjustly disenfranchised for the primary.

“For the reasons stated above, I hereby withdraw from participation as an aspirant in the PDP Primary election of 26th June 2021.”

Nwoye commended his “team, my fans, teeming supporters and loving family,” while enjoining them “to understand this painful decision which I have no doubt is the right course of action at this time.

“Our resolute commitment to changing the lot of the common people of our dear state for good through the instrumentality of party politics remains on course as is our personal conviction that whatever happens, power ultimately belongs to God.”

Nwoye urged his supporters and fans who are delegates “to vote for any aspirant of their choice.”