The selection committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) She did not disqualify any of the 23 presidential candidates who appeared before her, a member of the commission has clarified.
The member made the clarification to PREMIUM TIMES on Friday night to correct the report that 13 of the applicants have been disqualified.
According to the member, who asked not to be identified because he was not allowed to discuss the matter with reporters, the committee found that all the hopefuls have the basic qualifications to run for president.
“However, based on our assessment of their chances of winning the presidential election for our party, we found that 13 of them cannot realistically do this, so we recommend that they resign for others.
“We also did this to shorten the list so that the party doesn’t have to go into the primary with an unwieldy number of candidates, 23, which will be very cumbersome.”
According to the source, those who have been advised to resign are not required to follow the advice.
“We have cleared all of them because they are all qualified and the party will issue clearance certificates to all of them. We cannot stop any of the 13 if they insist on showing up and competing in the primaries despite our advice,” the source said.
The member added that the statement made on Friday by the chairman of the APC selection committee while presenting the committee’s report to the party’s national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, was misunderstood by journalists.
“Go and read what the president said again and you’ll see he didn’t mention global disqualification,” the source said.
“What the panel did was recommend to party leaders that at least 10 of the candidates should be persuaded to withdraw because they don’t seem to have any chance of winning election for our party.
“No one was disqualified and everyone can ignore our recommendation and move forward to participate in the primaries.”
Speaking to reporters, former APC president John Odigie-Oyegun, who led the selection panel, said all applicants passed the “basic constitutional” requirement, but the panel had to shortlist some applicants.
“And on that basis (Constitution) each member or applicant who presented himself qualified because it was basic and simple. But we are in the government party and we are very keen to continue with the process of replacing, in due course, our president with another member of the party.
“It is on that basis that we made our final list. I don’t want to read the names that I think would be left to you (President) but we have a short list. We severely reduced the number to 13.
“We could have shortened it a bit, but we deliberately wanted the younger elements to come to the surface to be seen, to be noticed and without noise. We would hand them over to the party and it is the party that decides who their candidate will be.”
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