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Senator Ned Nwoko has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of failing to honour a promise to grant him an automatic ticket for the Delta North senatorial seat after losing the party’s primary election.
Former Governor Ifeanyi Okowa secured 113,309 votes to defeat Mr Nwoko, who polled 2,612 votes in the APC primary held on May 18.
However, Mr Nwoko, 65, rejected the outcome, alleging that the election was manipulated in favour of Mr Okowa. He maintained that he had evidence to prove he was the rightful winner and vowed to seek a review of the process.
“I certainly was told before I came into the party there would be an automatic ticket for me,” the senator said on ARISE TV on Monday. “Why would I just leave like that without making sure I have a secure ride?”
Mr Nwoko suggested that he did not expect to lose the ticket, saying he had received repeated assurances from former APC National Chairman Abdullahi Ganduje that he would become the party’s candidate for the 2027 general election.
According to him, the promise of an “automatic ticket” was one of the incentives used by the APC to encourage his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), under which he won election in 2023. He left the PDP in February 2025.
“I, myself and others were promised that there would be discussions on the new structure of the party, and we believed that there would be some power-sharing formula,” Mr Nwoko said added. “We had meetings with leaders of the party and we were assured that there would be some sharing formula, power-sharing formula. We were even told, for example, that the state EXCO would be dissolved and that there would be nominations to enable the old APC to get a foothold into the government.”
Mr Nwoko also claimed that the APC leadership under Nentawe Yilwatda had failed to keep those commitments and had sidelined members who were already in the party before the recent wave of defections.
He said that “legacy APC members have been shoved aside, and the new guys that came in took over practically everything”.
The senator further insisted that he won in most of the wards across the district.
“We won the primary. All Ifeanyi Okowa did was to show evidence of just one ward where there was an issue,” he claimed. “I was there. I have the evidence. I have the video. You cannot convince somebody who is innocent to say, I am guilty. It’s not possible. We won the primary in 98 wards. No, I couldn’t have won his ward. It would be a foolhardy of me to think I would win his ward.”
