The ruling All Progressives Congress has inaugurated 17 panels for the screening of its Governorship, Senatorial and House of Representatives aspirants ahead of its primary election for the elective offices.

The panels will be screening 145 Governorship aspirants, 351 Senatorial aspirants and 1,197 aspirants for the House of Representatives.

Performing the exercise Saturday in Abuja, Deputy National Chairman, North, of the party, Senator Abubakar Kyari, assured the aspirants and other stakeholders of a transparent process.

On his part, National Organizing Secretary of the party, Alhaji Sulaiman Argungu, recalled that some aspirants had withdrawn from the presidential race.

He said; “The screening for the presidential aspirants, we have so far 28 aspirants and as you are all aware, some aspirants have started withdrawing their aspirations and by God’s grace on May 23, they will be screened, that is, those who are left.

“For governors, there are 145 aspirants and there will be three screening panels; 351 for Senate and four screening panels; 1197 for House of Representatives and 10 screening panels”.

Out of the 28 presidential aspirants, one of them, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, had withdrawn from the race while those who purchased the forms for the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, did not submit his forms back to the party. Also, those who picked forms for former President Goodluck Jonathan did not submit his forms before the deadline.

Although Argungu could not immediately provide the figures for the State Assembly aspirants, it was gathered that there could be nearly 2000 party members aspiring for the state constituency seats.

He said; “We also have a set of guidelines and aspirants’ assessment and verification forms that will be given to each of the committee for the screening and also each of the panels will be given list of names of those who collected the forms, expression of interest forms and the guidelines of our party – each of these for guidance.

“We expect that this work will be done between today and tomorrow. We believe this is not going to be a big assignment to all of you and we pray you will do justice to all the aspirants so that by 2023 we will have very good, credible candidates who are going to contest on the platform of our great party”. (Saturday Vanguard)

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