Siminalayi Fubara was absent on Saturday when the All Progressives Congress began screening incumbent governors ahead of the 2027 general election, and the party said he would be screened later because of official engagements in Rivers state. Nentawe Yilwatda, who chaired the screening committee, said the governors who missed the exercise would be accommodated whenever they became available.
Yilwatda, with Surajudeen Basiru as secretary, said the absent governors had reasons for staying away and described them as chief executives who had state matters to handle. He said the party would reschedule screening for any governor who could not attend, adding: “Anytime you’re free, call the screening committee. We give you a room. You come at your will and your convenience, and we also screen you.”
The committee screened Abba Yusuf, Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya, Nasir Idris, Caleb Mutfwang, Hyacinth Alia, Sheriff Oborevwori, Umar Bago, Dauda Lawal, Bassey Otu and Ahmed Aliyu on Saturday, while Fubara was absent alongside Francis Nwifuru and Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq. The exercise is part of the APC’s wider push to clear incumbent governors ahead of the 2027 race.
In Rivers, the party’s Assembly screening committee was running a separate exercise in Port Harcourt over Saturday and Sunday, where it screened 98 aspirants for the State House of Assembly ticket. Tanko Yamowa said the candidates and party members behaved calmly throughout and that no one tried to stir trouble. “The aspirants or the people of Rivers conducted themselves in a very good manner,” he said. “This is not what we were expecting, but they’ve given us a surprise. We were thinking maybe we would face some challenges, but since yesterday and today, nobody has come here to cause any trouble, and that is to say the APC is one family in Rivers State.”
For Fubara, the immediate question is not whether he was excused, but whether his screening will now wait until the party resets the date around his schedule. The APC has already answered that part: it will screen him when he is free.
