By Chioma Gabriel, Deputy Editor
The political camp of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is unrelenting in its compilation of alleged flaws in the January 13, 2011 presidential primaries of the PDP which was won by President Goodluck Jonathan. Already, aides of the former Vice President have ruled out litigation in making their case.

Top of the complaints list is that the Election Committee was dominated by supporters of President Jonathan including its Chairman, professor Tunde Adeniran who, according to Atiku’s camp, is a member of the South-West Co-ordination Committee of the Goodluck/Sambo Campaign Organisation.

It said the committee failed to attend to complaints raised before the primaries.

The Atiku Group alleged that in the weeks preceeding  the presidential primaries, there was disagreement over the list of delegates.

“Our group and the National Secretariat of the PDP were engaged in a battle of wits over this. Three weeks to the election, we addressed the media and alerted Nigerians that the ground rules for the election had not been released. We also requested that the list of delegates be made available to all campaign organizations but this was not done.

“ There were crises over the accreditation of delegates. The tags for delegates were handed over to state governors. The governors, in turn chose which delegates to accredit for the election. In most of the states, delegates  identified as being sympathetic to Atiku were denied accreditation. The states in this category included Adamawa where most members of the State House of Assembly who were sympathetic to Atiku were denied accreditation. The others include Ogun State where members of  G15, members of the state legislature estranged from Governor Gbenga Daniel and who had openly supported Atiku were denied accreditation by the governor. The same was reported by delegates in Akwa Ibom, Cross River,Jigawa, Gombe, Kwara, Oyo, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa and Plateau states. In those states, the delegate’s tags meant for these delegates were reportedly given to other persons who claimed to be the delegates.”

It cited a television footage of the Minister of Youths, Senator Olasunkanmi  Akinlabi, who stood at the polling booth directing delegates from Osun State on who they should vote for.

“As the delegates walked into the booth, he checked as they wrote on the ballot, sometimes pointedly instructing them on what to write. This went on for several minutes before he was confronted by officials of the Atiku Campaign Organization. The same experience was replicated in Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo, Kwara, Gombe, Adamawa, Anambra, Cross-Rivers and Benue State among others where identified officials supervised delegates to vote for President Jonathan.”