The PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) will today meet with all the 13 presidential aspirants ahead of October 6 scheduled by the leadership of the party to hold its national convention where the presidential candidate would be picked to fly the party’s flag.
The BoT had two weeks ago set up a 12-member committee to discuss with the party’s 13 presidential aspirants, with a view to picking one of them as consensus candidate.
The aspirants in the race for the presidential ticket of the PDP are, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal; Gombe State Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo; Senate President Bukola Saraki; former Governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido; former Governor of Kaduna State, Senator Ahmed Makarfi; and former Minister Special Duties and Inter-governmental Affairs, Mr. Tanimu Turaki.
Others are; former President of the Senate, Senator David Mark; a former Governor of Kano State, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; former Governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa; former Plateau State Governor, Senator Jonah Jang; Mr. Stanley Osifo and Dr. Baba Datti Ahmed.
The Chairman of the BoT, Senator Walid Jibrin, had revealed to journalists in a text message that the committee would impress it on the aspirants the dangers inherent in having such a large number of them in the race.
Makes N918m from Presidential, Gov Aspirants
Meanwhile, the party is smiling to the bank, as the 2019 general election is already proving to be a good harvest for the main opposition party. So far, it has raked into its coffers N918 million from the sale of presidential and governorship nomination forms.
The party, which began its sale of expression of interests and nomination forms for its members, seeking to contest in the 2019 general election, closed the purchase of forms on Monday, while submission of forms was closed yesterday.
As at last count, 13 presidential aspirants picked expression of interest and nomination forms, while 127 aspirants, according to THISDAY findings, have picked forms for governorships across the six geopolitical zones.
The party had pegged the cost of presidential expression of interest and nomination forms at N12 million, while that of governorship form was pegged at N6 million.
With the presidential form that stood at N12 million, the total cost for the 13 presidential aspirants is N156 million, while at the cost of N6 million for governorship forms, the total for the 127 aspirants is N762 million.
The North-west has the highest number of presidential aspirants with five coming from the zone.
According to findings, gubernatorial aspirants for North-east include, Taraba, one; Bauchi, four; Gombe, 11; Adamawa, seven; Borno, three and Yobe, two.
In South-east, however, Ebonyi has one; Imo, seven; Enugu, one; and Abia, one. Anambra State is not under contention as the tenure of the present governor is yet to be over.
In South-west; Ogun has one aspirant; Oyo has two; Lagos, two; Ondo, Ekiti and Osun States are not part of 2019 election.
In South-south, Cross River has four aspirants; Delta has one; Akwa Ibom has one; and Rivers, one. Edo and Bayelsa are not part of the 2019 election.
However, the North-central zone has the highest number of aspirants for governorship, followed by North-west, North-east, South-east, South-south and South-west respectively.
Plateau State has the highest number with 13 aspirants; Kwara and Gombe, 11 aspirants; Kaduna, 10; Katsina, 8; Benue, Adamawa and Imo have seven each.
Ogun, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi and Taraba states have one aspirant each.
According to findings, zone by zone breakdown of the number of aspirants, showed that in North-central, Nasarawa has five; Kwara, 11; Plateau, 13; Benue, seven; and Niger, five. The tenure of Kogi State governor has not yet expired.
The number of aspirants in North-west, are, Kano, five; Kaduna, 10; Katsina, eight; Jigawa, five; Kebbi, 4; Sokoto, two; and Zamfara, two.
