Ondo guber race: PDP disqualifies two, clears five aspirants for primary election

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has cleared five of the seven aspirants to contest its primary election for the Ondo State governorship election.

The party’s screening panel presided over by former Ebonyi State Governor, Senator Sam Egwu, however, refused to disclose the names of two aspirants said to have been disqualified.

Our correspondent gathered that the two aspirants who were disqualified on grounds of litigation surrounding their documentation are yet to appear before the Appeal Committee.

Two of the aspirants, Chief Olusola Ebiseni and former Ondo State Deputy Governor, Chief Agboola Ajayi, who displayed their certificates of clearance after receiving the same behind closed doors, declined comments when approached by journalists.

The one-day screening exercise which was held at the National Executive Committee (NEC) Hall at the PDP National Secretariat, started at about 11:00 am and lasted till 6:15 pm on Wednesday.

Earlier, Egwu, in an interview with reporters said, “I am here with the Ondo state gubernatorial screening committee, we started our work in the morning, we have seven contestants

“We have completed our screening, only some of them who’s documentation is not complete will still come back to complete that aspect of documentation and when that is done, we will be done with the screening and then make our report available.

“Because we feel like everyone should have a level playing ground, a very good opportunity so they won’t say they where screened out deliberately.”

He explained that the aspirants had until 5:00pm today (Wednesday) to make their case.

Egwu said, “You can see that PDP is the party that wants to give people the opportunity provided you play by the rules of the game.

“If a candidate tells us he forgot and he is going to bring his document before 5pm why not? We don’t want to give them the impression that the party has a candidate they support. Only few persons are involve in this case.”