By Frank Tietie
It is frankly embarrassing that there were some complaints about the cost of nomination forms of the ruling All Progressives Party (APC) being too high. Such is misplaced. For a presidential candidate that hopes to poll millions of votes in a general election, to be expected to buy a nomination form for 100 Hundred Million Naira, equivalent to about $175,000 (One Hundred and Seventy Five Thousand US Dollars) is quite modest for a serious political party, especially when it is a ruling political party like the APC.
Another look at the costs of the APC nomination forms is as follows:
Presidential Candidate – 100 Million Naira
Governorship Candidate – 50 Million Naira
Senatorial Candidate – 20 Million Naira
House of Representatives Candidate – 10 Million Naira
State House of Assembly Candidate – 2 Million Naira
Meanwhile, within a very short time, the APC announced its cost of nomination forms, recent developments have shown that the ruling party got it wrong. The party should have increased its cost of nomination form much more than it had announced.
A candidate only requires a number of 100,000 (One Hundred Thousand) of his supporters to give just N1,000 (One Thousand Naira) each to raise N100,000,000 (One Hundred Million Naira). That is certainly no big deal to any candidate with the potential to contest for the post of the President of Nigeria.
Therefore, it should not be presumed that any public servant who is vying for any of the elective positions under the ruling APC is a thief, who must have stolen public resources while in office.
However, the APC and other political parties have missed an opportunity to impose truly prohibitive and responsible amounts for their nomination forms in order to harvest serious candidates with the potential to win elections. It is, therefore, no wonder why the numbers of those expressing interest to contest in the elections, especially for the presidential ticket is growing each day as the primaries elections approach.
A fine pretest for popularity that is capable of winning elections is the ability to mobilise funds from individual supporters even before the elections begin. Therefore, the cost for the nomination forms should have been much higher.
The Electoral Act was reasonable in recommending in its Section 88 the maximum expenses for a candidate for any of the elections as follows:
Presidential Candidate – 5 Billion Naira
Governorship Candidate – 1 Billion Naira
Senatorial Candidate – N100 Million Naira
House of Representatives Candidate – 70 Million Naira
State House of Assembly Candidate – 30 Million Naira
Wouldn’t it, therefore, have been more reasonable if the political parties, particularly the APC charged a minimum of 10% of the cap on election expenses as non-refundable fees for nomination forms to show the seriousness of candidates?
Just take a look at the growing number of persons declaring to run for the office of Nigeria’s president under the APC. If such persons had to cough up N500,000,000 (Five Hundred Million Naira) as a non-refundable fee for a nomination form, wouldn’t many of them think twice?
The whole thing about declaring to run for the office Nigeria’s president even though has greater underlying reasons which are not expressed in this writing is becoming a huge joke because the APC failed to fix reasonable fees for nomination forms as a first point of weeding out political gate crashers.
The APC, therefore, as a party must quickly convene machinery within its legal framework to review the liberal fees for nomination forms by increasing it to a reasonably high cost to reduce the number of megalomaniacs who are rushing to pick nomination forms only for the reason to creating confusion for the party in the build up to the 2023 general elections.
▪︎ Tietie, Human Rights Lawyer & Arise News Legal Analyst, writes from Abuja, and sent this WhatsApp.