Two Ondo governorship aspirants fail PDP screening

Two of the nine governorship aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State failed the screening.

Chairman of the screening committee, Rt. Hon Yakubu Dogara dislosed this to journalists Friday evening at the completion of its assignment.

The former Speaker, House of Representatives, said the committee painstakingly, critically and analytically looked at the claims of all the aspirants and had reasons to question the submissions by two of them.

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Though he failed to disclose the names of the two on the excuse that the report of the committee has not been submitted to the National Working Committee which constituted the panel, Dogara said the two would be notified and have the opportunity of appealing before the appeal body which will sit on Monday.

Dogara on behalf of the committee said: “We started this work yesterday. You saw the number of hours. We took to painstakingly go through every claim made by the aspirins and the documents they submitted unfortunately we weren’t able to finish.

“Yesterday we didn’t complete the assignment. We are joined 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 grill the candidates like we said we stated yesterday.

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“The intention is that anybody who passes through the screening would have almost like a bankable case that cannot be challenged anywhere and so we have critically and analytically looked at all the claims made all the documents submitted to us and I’m happy to announce to you that we have completed the assignment and provisional certificate of clearance has been signed by the committee.

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“Unfortunately, in this case, I’m not happy to report this to you. But that’s about two failed the litmus test. But that’s 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 is entitled to launch that appeal from now onwards.”

The nine aspirants screened on Thursday for the July 22nd, PDP governorship primaries are Eyitayo Jegede; Sen. Boluwaji Kunlere ; Deputy Governor Dr. Agboola Ajayi; Dr. Eddy Olafeso; Ben Banji Okunomo; Bode Ayorinde; Otunba Bamidele Akingboye; Mr. Godday Erewa and Barr. Sola Ebiseeni