Hours after it was widely reported that the presidential screening panel of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), disqualified 10 aspirants, reports emerged that the panel might have only recommended the pruning of the long list of aspirants.
A member of the screening panel who spoke on the condition of anonymity said all the 23 aspirants that faced the panel passed the screening exercise, Premium Times reported.
However, the committee in its recommendation, listed names of aspirants that should be advised to step down.
While addressing journalists, former chairman of the APC screening panel, John Odigie-Oyegun had said all the aspirants passed the ‘basic constitutional’ requirement, but that the panel had to shortlist some aspirants.
Odigie-Oyegun had said the pruning was necessary to ensure that the party puts it best foot forward in the forthcoming General election.
“And on that basis (Constitution) every single member or aspirant that presented himself qualified because it was basic and simple. But we are in the governing party and we are keen on continuing the process of replacing—at a proper time—our president with another member of the party.
“It is on that basis that we made our final shortlist. I don’t want to read the names which I think would leave to you (Chairman) but we have a shortlist. We brought the number severely down to 13.
“We could have cut it a little shorter but we wanted deliberately the younger elements to surface for them to be seen, for them to be noticed and no noise. We would hand them over to the party and it is for the party to decide whom their candidate will be,” he had said.
Making clarifications on the situation, the member of the screening panel said the committee found that all the aspirants have the basic qualifications to run for president, however the party cannot go to the primaries with the large number of aspirants, hence the need to advise some to step down their ambition.
“Go and read what the chairman said again and you would see that he did not mention the world disqualification,” the source said.
“What the panel did was to recommend to the party leadership that at least 10 of the candidates should be persuaded to withdraw because they do not appear to stand a chance of winning election for our party.
“No one was disqualified and they all can ignore our recommendation and go ahead to participate in the primary,” the member was quoted to have said.
The source continued, “However, based on our assessment of their chances at winning the presidential election for our party, we found that 13 of them cannot realistically do this, so we advised them to step down for others.
“We also did this to trim the list so that the party will not have to go into the primary with an unwieldy number of aspirants, 23, which will be very cumbersome.”
The New Diplomat reports that those that are jostling for the party’s presidential ticket are; the Vice-President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo; the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi.
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi; a former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio; former Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu; a former Imo State governor, Senator Rochas Okorocha and former Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun.
Others are Pastor Tunde Bakare, the Cross River State Governor, Prof Ben Ayade; his Ekiti State counterpart, Dr Kayode Fayemi, an ex-Minister of State, Education, Emeka Nwajiuba, former President of the Senate, Senator Ken Nnamani; Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello; Jigawa State governor, Mohammed Badaru and former Zamfara State governor, Senator Ahmed Yerima, Senator Ajayi Borroffice; the only female aspirant, B. Uju Kennedy Ohanenye, Pastor Nicholas Felix Nwagbo; former Speaker of Representative, Dimeji Bankole; President of the Senate, Dr Ahmed Lawal; former Minister of Information, Chief Ikeobasi Mokelu and Mr Tein Jack Ric.
