By Mike Ozekhome
The staggering sum of N100 million fixed by the APC NEC for its
presidential nomination form has rightly sent shock waves of righteous
indignation across the country.
The APC had fixed N30 million for the “expression of interest form” and N70 million for the “nomination form”, making a total of N100 million. The party hopes to rake in N1.5 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 ethos, and also scam the entire country.
*Buhari, APC Chairman Adamu and other party leadersThe 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 it at 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 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.
They have managed to convince Nigerians that politics is indeed the art of
grand deception, double-dealing, duplicity, beguilement, sham and
self-contradiction. They have justified the cliché that diplomacy is the clever
art of telling a person to go to hell in such a way that he actually eagerly
looks forward to the journey.
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 the 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 the N5 billion limit for the
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. It has
been turned into a marketplace bazaar of bare-faced monetary banditry reserved
only for state captors, who have cunningly cornered our collective
commonwealth. It is so shameful and so disorientating that Nigeria can ever
find itself in this despicable state of nadir.
Under the Buhari government, Nigeria has since become the poverty
capital of the world, outstripping India. Nigeria ranks the number 149 most
corrupt country in the world out of 180 countries surveyed, as adjudged by
Transparency International, under its Anti-Corruption Perception Index. The
macro-economic environment has been badly fouled, leading to a free-for-all
fall of the exchange rate of the naira which now exchanges between 580 naira to
N700 to the dollar, as against N180-190- Buhari met it in 2015. Nigeria daily
experiences an uncontrollable inflation rate that defies any economic sense,
analysis and solutions.
To aspire to be a Governor under Buhari’s “puritanic” APC, an
aspirant must cough out N50 million; while aspirants to the Senate, House of
Representatives and House of Assembly must vomit N20 million, N10 million and
N2 million, respectively.
With
this circus of Baba Sallah’s Alawada Kerikeri histrionics and sheer theatrics,
President Buhari and the APC successfully completed their disdain for, mockery
and denigration of Nigerians and our hard-earned democracy.
Buhari and the APC must tell us where they hope that Vice
President Yemi Osibanjo, whose present annual salary is N12.126 million as
recommended by the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission set
up under section 32(d) of part 1 of the third schedule to the 1999
Constitution, will Obtain 100 million from when he would require 99 months
(eight years and three months) to earn the 100 million price for the nomination
form. It will take President Buhari himself whose salary is N14.05m 84 months
(7 years) to get N100m. They must explain to Nigerians that aspirants like Dr
Chris Ngige and Rotimi Amaechi who are ministers with an annual salary of N2,
026, 400 (N68,867 per month) will get 100 million for a presidential form when
it will take them nearly 50 years to earn 100 million.
Let Buhari and the APC explain to Nigerians how Kayode Fayemi
(Ondo State Governor), Yahaya Bello (Kogi State Governor), David Umahi (Ebonyi
State Governor) and Rochas Okorocha (ex Imo State Governor), whose salary per
annum is N2, 223, 705, will cough out 100 million when it will take each of
them 45 years to earn 100 million. Where will non-wealthy members of the APC,
like Gbenga Hashim Olawepo get such money from?
This
APC party and president Buhari must tell Nigerians where Senator Orji Uzor Kalu
and former Senate president Dr Ken Nnamani would fetch N100m from when their
salary as Senators was and is N750,000 per month (aside from humongous
allowances). It would take Kalu and Nnamani 135 years to earn 100 million. In
the final analysis, APC is probably zeroing in on Orji Uzor only a few
presidential candidates in the persons of billionaires like Kalu and Bola
Tinubu. The Director-General of Tinubu’s Support Organizatioin (TSO),
Kebbi-born Aminu Suleiman, has already signed a cheque for the N100 million. To
them, it is “chicken change”. Nigeria is haemorrhaging badly. It is just like the
case when Rome was on fire while Nero fiddled away.
The price tag of N100 million has obviously conscripted the
political space, marginalized, emasculated, and excluded the youths and women
from the APC political space. Yet, this is the critical segment of the society
that ought to enjoy inclusiveness and a libralised political space to ensure
their full participation in politics and engage in the national conversation.
Where is the place of the “Not-too-young-to-run” policy signed
into an Act of Parliament by Buhari on May 31, 2018? The APC’s mockery of
democracy has certainly thrown up nothing but money-baggism, godfatherism and
crass opportunism by those who have captured the State and our commonwealth.
I now
frontally challenge any of the aspirants who will purchase these forms, to show
us the source of the fund and also publicly display their tax returns in the
last three years.
The APC’s Shylock’s “pound of flesh” extortionist N100 million
levy is politically insensitive to the already vanquished Nigerians, having
regard to the present grinding poverty, unending insecurity, unabated
corruption, melancholy, disorientation, hunger, thirst, pains, pangs, blood,
hopelessness and haplessness, with which the party has afflicted Nigeria and
Nigerians in the last 7 years. Nigeria has never found itself in such battered
and tattered doldrums since Lord Lugard forcefully amalgamated the disparate
enclaves of Northern and Southern protectorates on January 1, 1914, to found
the contraption called Nigeria.
The exorbitant sum of N100 million is a direct invitation to
bare-faced thievery and political brigandage when these aspirants eventually
win elections and emerge leaders. The price tag constitutes direct and brazen
discrimination against other pauperized Nigerian members of the APC party,
especially the youths and women, contrary to section 14(2)(b) of the 1999
Constitution, which provides that “participation by the people in their
government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”.
It is also provided that “the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State
based on the principles of democracy and social justice” (section 14(1) of the
Constitution).
While
“the state social order is founded on ideals of freedom, equality and justice”
(section 17(1) of the Constitution); section 42(1) prohibits a citizen of
Nigeria from being discriminated against on the basis of sex, community, ethnic
group, place of origin, religion or opinion. This is precisely what the APC has
done to the youths, women and disabled members of the party. This is more so
because the Constitution does not permit independent candidacy. Members of the
APC, except the select deep pockets, money bags and nouveau rich, are
automatically cut off from the party’s various elective offices.
The problem with the tune, tone and template now set by the APC is
that politics has become the exclusive preserve of the high, mighty and wealthy
members of the society; and not for the poor. This has devalued democracy and
institutional morals. The APC is now rabidly promoting plutocracy (government
of the wealthy); gerontocracy (government of the oldest members of the
society); and oligarchy (government of a select few).
If President Buhari and the APC are genuinely interested in widening
and deepening the political space, they should immediately call for an NEC and
NWC meeting the APC to rescind and cancel this obnoxious policy of deliberate
exclusion of critical segments of their ruling party. It is a policy that is
only fit for the national museum of monuments and artefacts.
*Ozekhome,
is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
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