Not a few, including those who are apolitical, were outraged when Nigeria’s two leading political parties, the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), announced a staggering N100 million and N45 million, respectively, as cost of their presidential nomination forms for the 2023 general elections.
A simple mathematics shows that the APC, which started the sale of its forms on Monday, will rake in about N2.346 billion from the sale of Expression of Interest and Nomination forms to its 34 presidential aspirants while the PDP, at the close of sale of its forms, last week, netted N646 million from 17 presidential aspirants, including a female.
The APC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) had on Wednesday last week approved the cost of forms presented to it by the Senator Abdullahi Adamu-led National Working Committee (NWC). While the Expression of Interest form for state Assembly goes for N500, 000, the nomination form is N1.5 million totalling N2 million.
The Expression of Interest form for the House of Representatives is N1 million while the nomination form is N9 million. Also, the Expression of Interest form for Senate is N3 million while the nomination form is N17 million.
For the governorship, the Expression of Interest form is N10 million and nomination form is N40 million. The presidential Expression of Interest form is N30 million, with the nomination form is N70 million.
While N1.1 billion is expected from Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and nine other aspirants who have made public declarations, N600 million is likely to be paid by other six aspirants, who would declare their bid soonest. This puts the expected revenue to be generated from the APC presidential aspirants at a whopping N1.7 billion.
The PDP, which has slated its national convention to elect the presidential candidate for the 2023 general elections for May 28 and 29, 2022, had on the commencement of sales of forms on March 17, announced that the party pegged its Expression of Interest and Nominations forms for Presidential aspirants at N40 million while the expression of interest form is N5 million, the nomination form costs N35 million.
The PDP National Organising Secretary, Hon. Bature Umar, said the party allowed the only female candidate in the race to pay N6 million as cost for the two forms. Thus, with 16 male and one female presidential aspirants, the party raked in N646 million.
Nigerians, including the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), have continued to react to the development, with some describing it as insensitive. In his reactions, Executive Director CISLAC and Chairman Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani), said it was shameful that the ruling party endorsed the expression of interest and nomination forms for its presidential ticket at N100 million.
He said this was coming at a time many were dissatisfied with the level of youth participation in partisan politics, and called for deliberate measures to create the enabling environment for wider inclusion and active participation of women and youth in politics and governance of the country.
He said a key question is: “Who can legally afford N100 million for a presidential ambition? This despicable decision by the APC begs this question as it only serves within the contexts to marginalise youths, women and average citizens.”
However, appealing to those outraged by the huge cost imposed on the APC aspirants, a founding member of the party, Osita Okechukwu, explained that it was to maintain the axiom of President Muhammadu Buhari, not to fund the party with public funds and for candidates to mobilise funds as Buhari did.
Okechukwu, who is the Director General, Voice of Nigeria (VON), said: “May I humbly appeal to our compatriots, our members and our teeming supporters to note that the N100 million and other nomination fees are to primarily maintain the axiom of Mr President not to use public funds to fund our great party the APC.
“President Buhari expects the candidates to mobilise nomination fees from their supporters as he did at various times in his four times bid for president. An aspirant doesn’t need to personally own the N100 million or N2 million”.
It is trite to state that the excessive monetisation of Nigeria’s political system is not only a negation of the cardinal principles and ethos of democracy, illustrated in the epithet “democracy of the people, by the people and for the people”, but it is also antithetical to the fight against corruption.
Although, APC explained that the high cost of its nomination forms is to shut out unserious aspirants, it does not detract from the fact that these so-called “unserious aspirants” are a component of the bulk of the people illuminated in the definition of democracy. Shutting anyone out of the electoral process by whatever means is anti-democratic and must be abhorred.
We, therefore, urge all Nigeria’s political parties to take the poor state of the nation’s economy into consideration in fixing the cost of their nomination forms. It is immoral and a crass display of insensitivity by the ruling elite to flaunt humongous wealth, mostly ill-gotten, in a country rated as the world’s poverty capital. Poverty-stricken Nigerians deserve better.
