Presidential aspirant on the platform of African Democratic Party (ADC), Kingsley Moghalu, has dumped the party after he failed to pick the ticket of the party in the June 8th presidential election primaries.
Moghalu was defeated by the founder of Roots Television Nigeria, Dumebi Kachikwu, who garnered 977 votes in the primary election of the party that was held in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who was the presidential candidate of Young Progressives Party (YPP) in the 2019 elections, could only poll 589 votes.
In a letter written to the National Chairman of ADC, Chief Okey Nwosu, Kingsley Moghalu said the conduct of the election “revealed a fundamental clash of values between me and your leadership of the party.”
He said his resignation is with immediate effect, while noting that his sacrifices for the party was jettisoned for an immediate gain during the primary election and accused Nwosu of not providing a level playing field contrary to his memo to the aspirants before the contest.
The resignation letter dated June 13th reads:
I am writing to hand in my resignation from my membership of the African Democratic Congress, effective immediately.
I have resigned because the process and conduct of the party’s presidential primary on June 8, 2022 at Abeokuta revealed a fundamental clash of values between me and your leadership of the party.
Despite the circular you issued a few days to the primary committing the party to providing transportation and accommodation for delegates to and in Abeokuta, and which as we agreed would provide a level playing for all the presidential aspirants, the party under your leadership failed to do so. Some aspirants, including myself, made donations to the ADC party account as requested by the party for this purpose. This failure, which appeared intentional, created room for massive abuses of the electoral process including delegate capture and financial inducement of delegates. This is only one of numerous inconsistencies and the absence of transparency and predictability in the management of the party that I had progressively complained about.
As you are well aware, I have consistently resisted pressures to join the APC or the PDP precisely to avoid “cash-and-carry” politics. For me to remain a member of the ADC therefore, after what thousands of party members participated in at Abeokuta, would be to endorse political corruption of a most obscene order.
I joined the ADC in October 2021 with the best of intentions. Since then, I have put my entire team to work on growing and improving the party, including raising the party’s visibility on all media platforms, recruiting more than 10,000 new members to the party, and providing new offices for various state chapters of the party at my expense. It is deeply regrettable that other inducements appear to have played more important roles in determining the outcome of the primary than loyalty to the party.
