Nasarawa Governor and Chairman of Media and Publicity of the All Progressives Congress (APC) convention, Abdullahi Sule, has denied Governors in the party have pruned down the number of candidates for the primary to three from five.
Noting the party is set for an election in the event that the 23 candidates do not agree on a consensus, he said that President Muhammadu Buhari would have preferred a consensus candidate to reduce rancour.
Speaking during a Channels interview at the venue of the convention, he said: “People are actually mistaken and forgetting what the electoral act says. The governors have no power to reduce the number of aspirants, not even the party. According to section 84 subsection 9 to 10 of the act, it shows clearly that if one person says I am not going to withdraw, then, there is going to be an election.
“As far as we are concerned, we are ready for election, and if all the 23 people that are there are screened by the party and allowed for election, we will conduct an election.
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“So, the idea of pruning down or selecting a number of people that Governors do is just to reduce the number of people that we intend to support in order to reduce the tension. It is not necessary to force anybody actually to step down.
“The number of people that we will be supporting has not been pruned down to three, it is still five.
“Sometimes you don’t always get what You want. I think Mr President definitely wanted consensus in order to reduce the rancour
However, the president is a democrat and if he tries to convince people and they do not agree, he tells them to go out on the field and do it.”
An APC chieftain, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, added: “Nobody is going to introduce anything new this evening. All we are going to do is to follow the rules as laid down by the guidelines and the constitution of our party.
“There is a room for consensus and there is also room for proper election where the candidates are not able to come to terms with who among them will be the flag bearer of the party.
“We are hoping that we will showcase what makes APC tick as a political party. Also, there is a school of thought that wants this thing to be a consensus thing so that there won’t be any rancour after all is said and done.
“As an umpire, whatever they bring is what I will take. I want the best for the party so that after the convention, we can all go back home and start the electioneering campaign as one member of the same family.”