The All Progressive Congress (APC) Kogi stakeholders have warned of a sharp division in the ranks of the party, which may affect its fortunes in the forthcoming November 16th governorship poll.

The stakeholders warned the party has to be careful not to lose the sate in the November poll, pointing out the APC in the state is divided and already in court.

Senator Alex Kadiri told reporters in Abuja, alongside some of the party governorship aspirants it is a known fact that all is not well with the party in the state

Kadiri therefore called on the national leadership of the party to step in so as to avoid the Zamfara mistakes in the November poll.

“We want to reiterate for the third time that APC kogi state is divided and because of that division we went to court, the case is still in court and we have not been able to fast track that judgement the way Zamfara state was fast tracked.

“Nobody should blame us for going to court because we believe we have the right.

“All the things Yahaya Bello and his people are doing now are all illegal because the committee with which he is working has no legal standing anywhere in law.

“But as we preparing for the gubernatorial primaries, we want it known that we the leaders of the APC as well as the 20 aspirants of our party they are opposed to the Yahaya Bello contrived method of doing primaries because we are told that he gathered his appointers at lokoja over the weekend and they endorsed indirect primaries.

“We are saying that the primaries for Kogi state must be direct primaries where all the members of the party from all the local government will choose who they want to be their candidate.”

He added: “We don’t want it to be thrown to the executives in a way that one person will corner all the people to Lokoja and they will nominate him as the sole candidate.

“So since they are factions in the party how will the party conduct the primaries. We believe that our faction and Yahaya Bello’s faction cannot conduct a free and fair primary therefore we are appealing to the national Secretariat of our party to do the needful to set up an independent caretaker committee to go and run the party in Kogi state until after the elections have finished.

‘Our case in court is intact and the judiciary would have finished this before now but at a point Yahaya Bello’s people came to the court and said they would like to be joined because the outcome will affect them and we have no objection let them be joined the facts are there. We believe we are on the right track.”

Kadiri also noted the stakeholders “will not accept indirect primaries for the selection of a gubernatorial candidate for our party.

“We will not allow the governor to gather his political appointees in a room for them to say they are adopting indirect primaries. That means they are the same people who will go to the direct primaries to vote.”

While noting his faction has the majority of aspirant on its side, Kadiri stressed the National leadership of the party “ought to listen to the majority of the people who are in the party not anybody who they just appointed from outside.

“Those of us who are complaining are the original voters who brought success to the APC in Kogi state. Yahaya Bello was not one of us and we don’t want the house that we built to be completely destroyed.

“All the people who adopted him are his political appointees no society works like that.”