One of the aspirants and the lawmaker representing Ekiti South in the National Assembly, Senator Biodun Olujimi, on Wednesday criticized the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDp) for creating division within the party.

Olujimi made this assertion via a statement while disclosing that the party leadership took stakeholders for granted before making crucial decisions.

“We have been in this business for quite some time. If it is the former governor that is sitting as a serving Senator, can you do what has happened to him, no?

“My gender has been affected. Beyond that, the fact that people take everybody for granted has also affected all of us. You can’t take people for granted.

“This is a business we came into voluntarily and when you are in it, people are supposed to build consensus, not to talk down on others,” the lawmaker said.

Ripples Nigeria had reported that Olujimi cited irregularities during the process of accrediting the delegates, and gender discrimination as the reason for dropping out of the party’s primaries.

The lawmaker had hoped to be the first female governor of the state, noting that the electoral team led by Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa-Ibom State was expressly prejudiced against her candidacy.

Olujimi said, “I pulled out because every other aspirant has full compliments of delegates from their local government. It pleased the party to give me only 12 automatic delegates in mine.

“I have six local governments in my district as a sitting senator. They gave full compliments of delegates to somebody in four of my local government. And the two that were left, including my own local government. They gave me 12 delegates out of 78.

“I feel maybe it is because of my gender or maybe the party feels I have not done enough for it. That is why they would have done that to me.

“So, when they’ve done that to me, it didn’t make sense to continue with the process.”