Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, has given four reasons he believes direct primaries should be rejected.
The National Assembly has okayed it as part of of the electoral ammendment.
But Ortom is pleading with President Muhammdu Buhari not to accent to it.
He gave three reasons bordering on INEC’s capacity, finacial capacity of political parties, the need for the partises to have a choice and the fear that governors would exploit it.
Ortom, who made the call for rejecting it when he interacted with newsmen on Tuesday in Abuja, said that direct primaries was not in the best interest of the country.
He said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lacked the required personnel to monitor the conduct of direct primaries by political parties.
“The electoral law should allow political parties to adopt any of the process suitable for them in conducting their primaries.
“The adoption of direct party primaries will only give the governors more power to do whatever they want,” Ortom said.
He said that political parties lacked financial capacity to conduct direct primaries.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the National Assembly recently passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill adopting direct primaries for political parties in choosing their flagbearers in election.
