The All Progressives Congress (APC) have assembled some academics, lawyers and politicians to screen the incubent governor of Edo state and five other aspirants ahead of it primary election slated for June 22.
This, the party said was meant to check the repeat of the Bayelsa experience hence the invitation of the persons.
This was made known by the APC National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole at the national Secretariat in Abuja at the inauguration of the committee.
Oshiomhole further wondered why the APC candidate for the disqualified deputy governorship candidate for Bayelsa would be disqualified after haven been sworn on as a seating senator at the national assembly.
The national Chairman also said that the Bayelsa experience was in part, responsible for the display of aspirants credentials at the national Secretariat under the tag of “claims and objection”, even as he charged the committee to be thorough in their duties.
“After intensive consultations, we decided to have people who in our own judgement are sound and when they go through this process, their recommendations will be very helpful. Under our rules, we are expected to set up a screening committee before every election.
” The responsibility of the screening committee is to interact with all those who have aspirations to contest, strictly speaking, not yet aspirants. You become an aspirant after the screening committee has passed you. If anybody is dissatisfied with the screening committee’s recommendation, he/she will file an appeal and it will be forwarded to the Appeals committee and after that, they will make a final recommendation to the National Working Committee (NWC) that has the final decision as to who is eligible or who is not eligible.
“In the past, we have always performed this role but may be we did not give it the appropriate weight. May be we had assumed that people who want to aspire to certain offices particularly high elective offices of executive governor, we expect that no one will submit documents contain information that may possibly lead to disqualification. In the past, this was more of a formality but with what happened to us in Bayelsa state earlier this year, we decided to approach the issue of screening much more seriously than ever before….”
While speaking on the role of the NWC will be at the end of the screening exercise if there are discrepancies, Comrade Oshiomhole said: “NWC can reject the screening result.
Screening committee is High Court, Appeal Committee, Appeal Court and the NWC, the Supreme Court.”
