Human Rights lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, says the ruling All Progressives Congress and President Muhammadu Buhari have reversed the gains of democracy with the outrageous presidential nomination form fee of N100 million.
Ozekhome expressed his displeasure in a statement on Thursday night.
He lampoon the President, whom he said, decried the high cost of form before his emergence for supporting the outrageous fee.
Ozekhome questioned where the likes of the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbanjo, the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, among others would get the money to purchase the form.
He noted that even more worrisome about the fee is the fact APC prides itself as a party who detests corruption.
The statement read, “The party hopes to rake in #1.5 billion from the 15 aspirants that have so far declared interest in the presidential race. By this singular act, the APC has shown a shocking insatiable bacchanalian propensity to corrupt democracy, and democratic echoes, and also scam the entire country.
“The vulgarity of this exercise lies not just in the abominable fee prescribed, but more in the party’s pretentious mantra of fighting corruption, using a well-orchestrated and carefully oiled Hitler’s Goebel’s propagandist machinery of dubious pedigree.
“It is the more abhorrent when we realize that this is miles apart from (indeed more than double) the price fixed by the party’s whipping child, the opposition PDP, which has fixed N40million (N5 million) for the nomination of interest; and N35 million for the nomination form. The N100m is also over 100% of the N40 million fixed by the same APC for the 2018, presidential nomination form.
“President Muhammed Buhari and the APC have, by this singular act, exhibited a very odious and unpleasant example of how not to fight corruption.
“Nigerians should recall that in the prelude to 2015 the presidential elections, President Buhari had trenchantly criticized the N27.5 million levy imposed on his party aspirants for a presidential nomination form. He had pooh pooed it as exorbitant. He has now supported N100 million for the same exercise.
“With the new amended Electoral Act of 2022 fixing N5 billion limit for a presidential campaign as against the earlier N1billion under the 2010 Electoral Act, as amended, Nigeria’s politics and democracy have been completely moneticised with a swing towards anti-people capitalist mercantilism.”