Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Screening Committee for the July 22 Ondo State governorship primary, yesterday, said two of the nine governorship aspirants that indicated interest to contest the October 10 governorship election on the party’s platform, did not scale through the screening exercise.
The chairman of the panel, Yakubu Dogara, who disclosed this in a interview with journalists at the PDP National Secretariat, Abuja, said the two aspirants are free to approach the party’s gubernatorial appeal panel, if they think there was a miscarriage of justice.
However, Dogara, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, refused to disclosed the identity of the affected aspirants. The screening panel had, on Thursday and Friday, screened the nine aspirants that obtained the PDP Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms for the party’s primary.
The aspirants include the Ondo State deputy governor, Agboola Ajayi, PDP gubernatorial candidate in the Ondo 2016 poll, Eyitayo Jegede and immediate past national vice chairman of the party in the South West, Eddy Olafeso. Others are: Senator Boluwaji Kunlere; Ben Banji Okunomo; Bode Ayorinde; Otunba Bamidele Akingboye; Godday Erewa and Sola Ebiseeni.
The former speaker noted that, “we painstakingly went through every claim made by the aspirants and the documents they submitted. Unfortunately we weren’t able to finish yesterday. We didn’t complete the assignment. We adjourned at about 10:30 pm, last night and then we reconvened at about 1:00 p.m. today; that gave us the opportunity to grill the candidates like we stated yesterday.