The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP on Friday disqualified two of the nine aspirants jostling for the party’s flag at its July 22 governorship primaries for the election coming up on October 10.
It cleared the remaining seven.
The chairman of the party’s five member screening panel, Hon Yakubu Dogara told reporters in Abuja after the exercise that those cleared met the criteria given to the panel by the party. He did not disclose their names nor those axed.
He said: “The intention is that anybody who passed through the screening would have almost like a bankable case that cannot be challenged anywhere.”
In Dogara’s words: “So we have critically and analytically looked at all the claims made in all the documents submitted to us and I am happy to announce to you that we have completed the assignment and provisional certificates of clearance have been signed by the committee.
“They will be distributed to the candidates right now some of them who are here collecting their certificates. Unfortunately, in this case, I am not happy to report this to you that two aspirants failed the litmus test.
“That is not to say that they have been disqualified because we don’t have the powers to disqualify anybody.
“There’s still the opportunity of redress at the appeal panel, which will sit on Monday.
“So if any of the two candidates that didn’t pass screening feels that maybe some kind of miscarriage of Justice was done, like they have the opportunity to appeal in the court, he is entitled to launch that appeal from now onwards.”
On how detailed they worked on the task given to the committee by the National working committee (NWC) of the party, Dogara said “We started this work yesterday.
“You saw the number of hours we took to painstakingly go through every claim made by the aspirants and the documents they submitted unfortunately we weren’t able to finish yesterday because we didn’t complete the assignment.
We adjourned at about 10:30 p.m. Last night and then we reconvened at about 1:00 p.m. Today that gave us the opportunity to further grill the candidates like we said we started yesterday,” he said.
The nine aspirants are the party’s governorship candidate in the last election, Mr Eyitayo Jegede, SAN; Senator BOluwaji Kunlere; Ondo Deputy Governor, Hon. Agboola Ajayi; Dr. Eddy Olafeso; Mr Banji Okunomo; Hon Bode Ayorinde; Otunba Bamidele Akingboye; Mr. Godday Erewa and Barr. Sola Ebiseeni.
They all appeared before the panel for the screening which started on Thursday.
