The Alliance for Democracy, AD, lost in the last general election in Oyo State because its leaders worked for another party.
The gubernatorial candidate of the party in Oyo State, Engr. Oyedele Hakeem Alao, made this known while speaking with journalists in Ibadan.
He said instead of supporting the party, some of the leaders were only interested in reaching an agreement with other parties and offering their candidates for sale.
Alao spoke on the electoral system, saying that the lack of political will was the major problem.
“I’ll conclude that nothing much is actually wrong with our electoral system; the drawback is the lack of genuine political will and commitment to enforce the electoral laws to have credible polls that will give Nigerians across board good governance.
“That’s why the Kofi Anan post-2019 election roundtable in Abuja with European Union (EU) described the 2019 elections as falling short of the international standard in the real democratic context. There were, however, some positive sides like the not-too-young-to-rule which offered a lot of young people the opportunity to contest the 2019 elections.
“Electoral reform is an integral part of democratic development and in the term that it is undertaken to improve the electoral process(es) by promoting the general interests and rights of the citizenry while operationalising key principles as inclusiveness, impartiality, transparency, accuracy and integrity. These electoral processes include timely delivery of election materials, registration of political parties, vote counting method, reduction in gender imbalance, etc.
“The excos of political parties, at both federal and state level, usually constitute themselves into autocrats; the they would want to do things the way they want it.
“How AD was run as a party really affected our efforts in the 2019 elections. In fact, there were so much internal problems with the party; the national body was factionalised and there was also a court case, and above all, the South West excos were suddenly dissolved and our party leaders in the state eventually sold out.
“There were parallel congresses in political parties; some political parties didn’t do primaries, they handpicked party excos. The current PDP exco in the state (Oyo) which brought in the present government in the state is a clear instance.”
