Former special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on
prosecution, Okoi Obono-Obla has appealed to the All Progressives Congress
(APC) not to shut its doors against genuine aspirants who have not helped
themselves to public funds or are sponsored by wealthy people.
In a statement, Obono-Obla said, “Genuine Aspirants that
have not helped themselves to public funds or been sponsored by wealthy people
cannot afford to buy nomination forms with such exorbitant and astronomical
amounts.
“We cannot afford as a social democratic party founded on
the ideals of social justice, a transparent and credible electoral system and
genuine democracy shut its door to popular but poor aspirants”.
Obono-Obla described the astronomical amount of N100m for presidential
aspirants as a ‘mercantile and bourgeois approach’, saying it will fuel and
facilitate corruption, classify and monetize the political process.”
He noted that even in the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia
and India, aspirants are not required to pay to buy nomination forms with such
huge amounts of money.
He said if the conditions prevailing in Nigeria prevail in
hose countries, only millionaires and billionaires would be in the category of
people who can contest elections.
“When such huge amounts of money are what candidates are
required to pay then we should expect to be entitled to contest, we should not
be surprised when the process is hijacked by money launderers, criminal
syndicates and terrorists that want to sponsor candidates to use them to
destabilize the country after they get into the office to foist their nefarious
agenda on society.
“APC should, as a matter of urgency, drastically scale down
the fees and democratise and de-classify its processes so that genuine and
popular candidates that have ideas that can change the country get into
leadership”.
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