Panel silent on 10 disqualified aspirants

Panel silent on 10 disqualified aspirants

In the meantime, the party’s presidential screening committee submitted its report on Friday.

The Chairman of the committee, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, who submitted the report to the APC National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, said only 13 out of the 23 aspirants who presented themselves for screening were shortlisted.

Oyegun, who is a former national chairman of the party, said, “The basic constitutional qualification for you to aspire to be a President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is simple and straightforward. And on that basis, every single aspirant that presented themselves qualified, because it was basic and simple.

He stated, “But we are a governing party and we are keen on continuing the process and replacing, at the proper time, our President with yet another member of the party. So, the ability to lead, background, experience, understanding of the Nigerian situation, ideas as to how issues, difficulties and problems can be addressed, and how the country can be moved forward, became a critical consideration.

It is on that basis – who are you, what have you achieved, what is your understanding of the nation and what you think you can contribute to move the nation forward – it was on the basis of that that we made our final shortlist.

“I don’t want to list the names. I’m going to leave that to you. But we have a shortlist, which brought the number severely down to 13. We could have cut it a little shorter, but we wanted a pedigree of younger elements to surface, for them to be seen, for them to be noticed, and who knows? We hand them over to the party and it is for the party to decide who the preferred candidate will be.”

Oyegun said the screening committee engaged all the aspirants on the issue of consensus and that 99 per cent of them agreed to it except one aspirant, who said he would only accept if he emerged as the consensus candidate.

The committee chairman stated while submitting the report, “One part I need to emphasise is that we engaged every aspirant on the issue of consensus and it is a pleasant surprise that 98 to 99 per cent agreed that the party is supreme. And that whatever the party finally decides, with proper consultation, they are likely to accept.

“We had only one exception who said, ‘Yes, I will accept consensus so long as it is built on me’. I think it is a point that needs to be emphasised. So, that gives you a lot of leeway in the days and hours ahead to trim down even more drastically. But finally, we think we should not be afraid of a contested primary if anybody insists on the contest.”

Although he did not mention the aspirant who did not subscribe to the idea of consensus, many political analysts believed it could be a national leader of the party and former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, whose camp had said repeatedly that he would prefer an open contest.