Five aspirants for the national chairmanship of the All Progressives Congress (APC) may have dropped out of the race.
This has left the field for a tight contest by seven top members of the party.
Only these seven met yesterday’s deadline for submission of their nomination forms.
The Former Deputy Governor of Osun State, Otunba Iyiola Omisore yesterday submitted his nomination form to contest for national secretary of the party.
Preparations for next weekend’s convention from which a new national executive committee of the party will emerge has moved into a higher gear.
The tempo increased yesterday after a high court in Abuja vacated an order stopping the national convention.
Justice Bello Kawu ruled that a political party could not be sued by a member.
But the bad blood generated by the recent moves against the Chairman of the party’s Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Mai Mala Buni, and the Secretary, John Akpanudoedehe, appears not to be over yet.
Akpanudoedehe declared that he remained CECPC Secretary regardless of the vote of no confidence said to have been passed on him on Thursday by a majority of the committee members.
Chairmanship aspirants who beat the deadline for the submission of nomination forms yesterday were the pioneer Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Senator Abdullahi Adamu; ex-Governor Umar Tanko Al-Makura; Mallam Saliu Mustapha (Turaki Ilorin); Senator Sani Mohammed Musa; ex-Governor George Akume; another former Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Abdulaziz Yari; and the youngest, Mohammed Etsu.
