Ondo poll: Panel overrules Dogara, clears guber aspirant

Gbade Ogunwale, Abuja

The Ondo state governorship screening appeal committee of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday, overruled the decision of former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogara excluding Mr Godday Erewa from the party’s primary election.

The screening committee headed by Dogara had on Saturday, disqualified Erewa from the race, citing alleged inconsistencies in some of the documents the aspirants submitted at the screening.

Erewa had filed an appeal before the appeal panel, chaired by Senator Istifanus Dung, challenging his exclusion from the primary election, which was resolved in his favour.

Although Senator Dung declined to speak with journalists after the exercise, which held at the Abuja secretariat of the PDP, Erewa said it was the party’s officials that misspelt his middle name as “Otisewino” instead of Oritsewino while processing his nomination documents.

In a chat with journalists shortly after the exercise, Erewa said that members of the appeal were convinced when he tendered all his certificates bearing the correct spellings of his first, middle and surnames.

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Erewa said, “The reason they gave was that there was an error in the spelling of my name but there was no error. May be the way they were pronouncing the name in their own dialect is different from the way it was spelled.

“The name in the certificate that was not cleared is different from the name in my school certificate. So when they looked at it from my appeal, they had to clear me”.

According to him, since it was party officials at the secretariat that committed the error, the appeal committee had no other choice than to clear him.

However, the fate of another aspirant, Otunba Bamidele Akingboye who was similarly disqualified by the Dogara committee could not be ascertained as of the time of filing this report.

Akingboye, who also appeared before the appeal committee, declined to speak with journalists after the exercise, as he walked briskly to a waiting car that drove him out of the party secretariat.

Neither the appeal committee chairman, Dung nor any of the members was ready to speak on Akingboye’s fate.