Edo 2020: APC inaugurates screening committee

The All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee, on Tuesday, inaugurated screening and appeal Committees ahead of June 22 governorship primary in Edo State..

Professor Jonathan Ayuba will serve as Chairman of the Screening Committee, while Professor Abubakar Fari will lead the Appeals committee.

Speaking at the event, national chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, said the screening committee has been saddled with the assignment of looking at credentials submitted by the aspirants.

He noted that his leadership was determined to take more than passing interest in the credentials submitted by aspirants to avoid a recent unfavourable experience when it lost mandate it won at the polling booth in Bayelsa State through a court process which invalidated the academic credentials of its deputy governorship candidate.

He said: “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.

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“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 maybe we did not give it the appropriate weight. Maybe 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.”

The APC national chairman however maintained that his NWC has the final say on the findings of both the screening and appeal panels.

“NWC can reject the screening result. The screening committee is High Court, Appeal Committee, Appeal Court and the NWC, the Supreme Court.”

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE