The Social Democratic Party, SDP, on Wednesday said the high cost of the All Progressives Congress, APC, nomination forms has shown that the ruling party is anti-youths and does not have the interest of the masses at heart.
The National Publicity Secretary of the SDP, Alfa Mohammed, said this in a statement on Wednesday.
The party said this after a group bought the N45 million nomination form for President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday.
The ruling party had on Tuesday announced that a presidential aspirant would pay N45m for its expression of interest and nominations forms; a governorship aspirant would pay N22.5m; a senatorial aspirant, N7m.
Mohammed, speaking on the development, stressed that the price of forms fixed by the party showed they were neither youth-friendly nor considerate about the realities of today’s Nigeria.
He said, “We are not surprised that the APC has put such an outrageous amount of money as fees for its forms. We have said it several times that the APC intends to rig the forthcoming elections by inducing voters.
“And to do that, they need a lot of money. One of the means of getting such money is to levy their aspirants heavily.
“Otherwise, how did (President Muhammadu) Buhari pay for his nomination form in 2014?
“Even then people had to rally round and donate before he was able to purchase his own. We are talking of Not-too-Young-to-Run, how do you expect young persons, most of whom are unemployed, to raise such outrageous fees?
“It is an indication also that they are anti -youths, they are anti-masses, they do not have the interest of the masses at heart, and they are not concerned about credible leadership. They do not want credible people to participate in the election.”
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