As a political analyst who understands the APC Constitution and its clauses, I hereby issue this direct query and statement to the APC screening team and party leadership on the Delta State process:
The APC Constitution is explicit on these matters. Article 9.3(i) provides that “Only fully registered and financially up-to-date members of the Party shall have the right to vote and be voted for into any of the elective positions, subject to the provisions made for such elections pursuant to this Constitution or other Laws or Regulations.”
Article 2 affirms the supremacy of the Party Constitution (subject only to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and other valid laws), while the aims and objectives in Article 7 include the duty “
To promote and uphold the practice of internal democracy at all levels of The Party’s organisation.”
Screening Committees are specifically charged (under the relevant provisions on standing and ad-hoc committees) with the responsibility of screening Party aspirants for nomination after receiving reports from the Legal Department, precisely to ensure compliance with these requirements.
On what objective, transparent, and constitutional basis, therefore, were Ifeanyi Okowa and his associate Innocent Esenwezie cleared and allowed to contest the purported APC primary elections in the first place?
The process that followed, produced results widely viewed as badly formulated. Those outcomes have uprooted the relative peace and internal harmony that the APC had been building in Delta State.
Restoring credibility and unity after this will be extraordinarily difficult; as things stand, it will take something approaching the impossible for the APC to win Delta State under the current cloud.
Delta has a distinctive pre-election dynamic: communities and stakeholders often reach a broad consensus on preferred candidates well before formal voting.
That organic alignment has been disrupted. The table for the sitting governor’s re-election prospects is already shaky; any claim that the party can deliver bulk votes for the President from Delta under these conditions is delusional.
The deeper concern many Deltans express is that Okowa appears intent on installing a succession arrangement in which Innocent Esenwezie is positioned as a preferred successor or stooge once Sheriff Oborevwori leaves office.
The pattern of handpicking local-government chairmen across the state and then securing their emergence through questionable means is seen as an attempt to entrench a personal dynasty or monarchy-style control.
Large numbers of Deltans have made clear they will resist that project.
The screening team and higher leadership must now answer whether the process fully complied with the Constitution’s membership, eligibility, screening, and internal-democracy clauses—or whether it departed from them in a manner that further alienates the base and hands the opposition an easy narrative.
The party’s ability to compete effectively in Delta hinges on addressing these legitimacy questions with facts, fairness, and strict adherence to its own Constitution rather than imposed outcomes.
-Pamela O.
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