WORD FOR WORD: ‘One aspirant said consensus must be built on him’ — Oyegun’s remarks at presentation of report

John Oyegun, chairman of the presidential screening committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC), on Friday, presented the report of the panel to Abdullahi Adamu, chairman of the party.

The presidential screening exercise held on Monday and Tuesday.

In his remarks, Oyegun said the committee was impressed by the pedigree of presidential hopefuls, adding that the APC should also be proud of its efforts to attract “youthful” aspirants.

Here are his remarks.

It is our pleasure to be here with you today to present our report. I will be very brief.

Having been a tenant in this building before, Mr National Chairman, let me say that I came in and I thought I was in the wrong premises. I want to say that you have performed something short of a miracle in this building. And I can tread properly now that I am in the secretariat of the governing party.

I thank you for the assignment that you gave us and our members. I know how short time has been. I know the environment in which you took over. So, we were quite happy to also do as much as we could to make the work of the party lighter.

We had the privilege of being inaugurated by you, precisely on the 30th of May, and we immediately started work on that very day after a brief meeting. I will just summarise.

First, we had 23 aspirants that we interacted with. And my first comment is that indeed, we are a very lucky party. Those were 23 that presented themselves. We had a of lot of others — prominent Nigerians both within and outside the country — that had applied, but for whatever reason, could not proceed with their applications.

The point I want to make is on the quality of the people that want to govern this country. The second point I want to make is that, we were surprised at the active participation of youthful members of the party, some of whom really surprised us as to what they have accomplished in life, their understanding of the situation in this country, and why they want to have the privilege of governing this country. What was important was that they so believed in the country and the party that they were able to pay the sums that some of us considered princely handsome, to participate in the process. So, I think the party ought to pat itself in the back for that.

Our report is basically simple and short. We don’t want to beat about the bush. There were two aspects to it.

The basic constitutional qualifications for you to aspire to be a president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that was simple and straightforward. And on that basis, every single aspirant that presented themselves qualified, because it was basic and simple.

But we are a governing party, and we are keen on continuing the process and replacing, at the proper time, our president with yet another member of the party. So, the ability to lead, background, experience, understanding of the Nigerian situation, ideas as to how issues, difficulties and problems can be addressed, and how the country can be moved forward, became a critical consideration.

It is on that basis — who are you, what have you achieved, what is your understanding of the nation and what you think you can contribute to move the nation forward — it was on the basis of that that we made our final shortlist. I don’t want to list the names. I’m going to leave that to you. But we have a shortlist which brought the number severely down to 13. We could have cut it a little shorter, but we wanted a pedigree of younger elements to surface, for them to be seen, for them to be noticed, and who knows? We hand them over to the party. And it is for the party to decide who their preferred candidate will be.

And it is also an opportunity to showcase the kind of people that exist within the party with their youthfulness and kind of experience. Let the world know that this is a party that cares for the young and this is a party that when we say the young can aspire, we really mean it. And this has been showcased in the report that we have written.

I will conclude by saying that we only threw a word of caution; that there is this cleavage that is gradually becoming the centre stage in national discourse between the north and the south and the presidency. And we just want to advise strongly that the party should please think of it in making its decision, address it, and let it influence their thoughts, because it has its own implications.

Outside that, just on behalf of the wonderful colleagues you gave me to work with, I want to thank you very much. It was a sensitive assignment, a challenging assignment, but very interesting assignment from which I’m sure all of us have profited immensely, and from which we think the party will also profit.

Also, one part I need to emphasise. We engaged every aspirant on the issue of consensus and it is a pleasant surprise that 98 to 99 percent agreed that the party is supreme. And that whatever the party finally decides, with proper consultation, they were likely to accept. We had only one exception who said ‘yes, I will accept consensus so long as it is built on me’. I think it is a point that needs to be emphasised. So, that gives you a lot of leeway in the days and hours ahead to trim down even more drastically. But finally, we think we should not be afraid of a contested primary if anybody insists on the contest.

I thank you very much, Mr Chairman. It is now my honour and privilege, on behalf of the committee set up, to present to you the report.