By Yusufu Shehu USMAN,mni

I think the APC should not apply it’s Form 18 as the agreement to predicate it’s consensus, if eventually the party yields to the request of the President to accord him the privilege to select his successor through the consensus of the aspirants and the critical stakeholders of the APC

It would be recalled that Form 18 was an anexture to the Expression of Interest Form required to be executed and returned along with the completed Expression of Interest Form by all the aspirants

The content of the said APC Form 18 is as precarious as it is ludicrous and ridiculous

It states in content, context and effect that the aspirant who executed the Form had withdrawn from the race even before he is screened and cleared for the Primary election

The effect of this declaration could be that the aspirant has nullified his aspiration and ruled himself out of the race even before the contest

And if all the aspirants who purchased the Expression of Interest Form also executed Form 18 along with it, at the last count, the effect that the APC does not have any aspirant, because all of them have withdrawn before the contest

Therefore, in my respectful opinion, the penultimate Form 18 will not suffice as a consensus agreement as envisaged by the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended)

It is predicated on a wrong and illegal foundation and can easily collapse under the litmus test of legal scrutiny

It is my view that if the APC wants to extricate it’s self out of this legal contraption and unnecessary conundrum it has foisted on its self, it has to review Form 18, expunge it from the sets of documents to be considered pursuant to arriving at a consensus candidate ahead of it’s Presidential Primaries

The neater and more honourable way to go, is if after all the horse trading, negotiations and settlements, the party arrives at a consensus candidate, it should require all withdrawing aspirants to individually write and submit a withdrawal agreement in clear, unambiguous and unreserved terms

This is the only format contemplated by the Electoral Act as evidence of Consensus