On Buhari’s APC nomination forms

Right or wrong, President Muhammadu Buhari, this week, precisely on Tuesday, received the N45 million All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential nomination and expression of interest forms purchased for him by the Nigeria Consolidation Ambassadors Network (NCAN) for the 2019 presidential elections.
Of course, the debate on the propriety or otherwise of the President accepting the N45m forms will linger for long, mainly because now is the time to look for faults of political opponents and blow them out of proportion to maximise political gains.
Whether the President is right or wrong, therefore, would largely depend or be determined by ones political bend.
And of course the President knows this, too well, and quite nicely chose to hit his opponents as he collected his forms, which his opponents say were bought by money taken from the government purse.
Still, others say that how the forms were purchased for the President has violated the nation’s electoral act.
Receiving the forms at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, the President said weak and selfish politicians who could not align themselves with the vision of the present administration have exited the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
He commended the group, made up of youthfrom different parts of the country, for obtaining the forms for him.
The President said he had to come out of retirement to realise his vision to rescue the country in 2002.
“I am honoured today to receive youths from all over the country contributing to buy the form for me,” he said.
“The weakest whose senses of expectations do not align with our vision have exited our party.
We now have a party of strong and patriotic people who are ready to work for a strong Nigeria.” Cashing on the opportunity, the President said the present administration has completed good number of projects while new ones are under construction And, speaking like the Buhari we all know, he said that corruption has been tamed, through the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) which has reduced stealing in public service.
And who can contradict the President on his claim? Surely, the level of corruption in the country has reduced and Nigeria is now better positioned to attract FDI and cater for needs of its citizens.
However, in a way, the gathering where the President spoke at and the needless controversy on the propriety or otherwise of buying the forms for the President would have been avoided had more thought been put into the issue of the forms purchase.
True, it would have been ideal had the purchaser provided names of cash contributors and amount against each name.
That was not done! In fact, the statement made by the deputy chairman of NCAN, Mr.
ChuckwuemekaNwajiuba, that the millions of members of the group contributed to purchase the forms, with some paying as little as N68, only compounded the issue.
Ours is a country of distrust, where few believe in what the leaders say and many think of the leaders as corrupt.
And in an era where all manner of groups are purchasing forms for real and imaginary corrupt politicians, hardly can anybody be blamed for making all manner of allegations.
Agreed, the is certainly not corrupt.
Still, things about and surrounding him must be seen to be incorruptible and transparent.
Thus, what is needed is for the purchasers of the APC presidential nomination and expression of interest forms to act like the President would have loved them to – transparently.
And this can be done by publishing names and amount contributed by the donors

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