Anti-corruption: APC presidential aspirants ask Buhari to reject N45m nomination form

A group under the aegis of Coalition of 2019 All Progressives Congress (APC), Presidential Aspirants has called on President Muhammadu Buhari not to accept the N45 million Nominations and Expression of Interest form as doing so will put a question mark on his acclaimed anti-corruption posture.

The coalition which made the call at a press conference yesterday in Lagos in a communiqué read by Chief Charles Udeogaranya, one of the aspirants also demanded that the APC immediately scrap the nomination fee in line with the laws of the land.

According to the group, accepting the forms will defeat the President’s image in the fight against corruption.

“We demand that President Muhammadu Buhari should reject the N45 million nomination forms purchased for him by a group for some reasons.

“It fundamentally contravenes Section 90 (9) of the electoral law and the offer runs contrary to Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade.

“Though some aspirants can afford the exorbitant cost of the forms, such amount is clearly not affordable to many others, including President Buhari and particularly the youths and women of our great party, APC,” said the Group.

They also added, “We demand that the party should, without further delay, scrap nomination fees in consistent with the law of the land,” the communiqué which was signed by Udeogaranya, Dr. SKC Ogbonnia and Alhaji Mumakai Unagha, read in part.

The group further threatened that “failure to adhere to the demands will give the group no other option than to conduct our own primaries in line with extant electoral laws and the constitution.”

While faulting some of the actions of the present government, one of the members of the coalition, Dr. Ogbonnia said that if given the opportunity to lead, concerted efforts would be made to ensure policies implementation, saying that the major challenge facing the country was not lack of polices but failure to implement them.

According to him, the power generation roadmap would be implemented to fight youth unemployment, poverty and economic crisis facing the nation.

The coalition added that Nigeria would be great if credible leadership is provided to manage the nation’s human and material resources.