TheCable

The All Progressives Congress (APC) screening panel has shortlisted 13 out of 23 presidential hopefuls for participation in its special convention to pick a standard-bearer.

John Oyegun, chairman of the screening panel, said this on Friday while presenting a report to Abdullahi Adamu, the APC national chairman.

“First, we have 23 aspirants that we interacted with and my first comment is that we are indeed a lucky party. The point I want to make is the quality of the people that want to govern this country,” Oyegun said.

“We are a governing party and so the ability to lead, the background, experience… it is on the basis that we made a shortlist. I won’t want to read the names, I’d leave that to you, but we brought the number down to 13.

“We could have cut it a little shorter but we wanted the younger elements to surface.”

Details of the presidential hopefuls who did not make the cut are not yet known.

Felix Morka, APC spokesman, had said 28 presidential forms were purchased, but three persons — Chris Ngige, minister of labour; Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum: and Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) — did not submit their forms.

Also, presidential forms purchased for former President Goodluck Jonathan and Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), were not submitted.