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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda, has indicated that the ruling party may not print a single expression of interest and nomination form for the 2027 presidential party primary despite the overwhelming endorsement given to President Bola Tinubu for the forthcoming election.
Yilwatda dropped the hint while appearing on a national television programme on Wednesday, emphasising that his party will not stop anybody who wants to purchase the presidential nomination forms from doing so.
He also noted that the endorsement of President Tinubu will not stop the ruling party from conducting the primary as statutorily required by the law.
Coming close to discouraging other party members from wasting their resources buying the N100 million nomination forms, he, however, noted that they will neither print only one form nor stop anybody from picking forms.
Asked if the ruling party will be printing more than one presidential nomination form for its primary, Yilwatda responded: “If we already have members endorsing President Tinubu as their own preferred candidate for the 2027, the number of nomination forms printed is not the issue.”
“The main thing is one person being accepted as the party’s preferred candidate by members. Even if we print one million nomination forms and only one person is going to stand for it, does it actually matter?
“If the party members overwhelmingly endorse President Tinubu as their own preferred candidate, others can pick the forms, but the members will still go for their preferred candidate.
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“We saw it during the national summit when the entire critical stakeholders, including the governors, overwhelmingly endorsed the President as their sole candidate for 2027 election,” he said.
On whether the party will still conduct the primary at the end of the day, the former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) responded: “Of course, we will because we all know what the Electoral Act says about conducting the primaries.”
“It says that even if there is endorsement, and only one person is contesting, parties must conduct primaries.”
The former APC candidate for the 2023 governorship election equally dismissed any threat from the opposition, especially the coalition African Democratic Congress (ADC), stressing: “We all saw what happened during the legislative bye-elections and how they performed.
“There was no national opposition for the APC. PDP won in only one state in the South East out of the 17 constituencies, APGA won only in Anambra while NNPP won only one in Kano out of the 17 constituencies.
“APC won in all the geographical spread. When we talk about the opposition, the question to ask is who is the leader of the opposition? Everybody in the ADC is looking for tickets unlike what happened in 2013 when APC was formed.
“There was this national leader who was not interested in the contest but aggregating all the merging political parties, investing money, intelligence and that person is President Tinubu. He actually mobilised the opposition. We don’t have such leader in the ADC because everyone is looking for the ticket,” he defended.
