WE join millions of other patriotic Nigerians in expressing our disgust at the humongous amounts of money that political aspirants on the platforms of the two major political parties – the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, – are being made to cough out to buy Expression of Interest and Nomination forms.

Of particular interest to us at least for now is the extortionate and exorbitant cost of presidential nomination forms at this juncture when we are searching for a leader with radical ideas and capacity to steer the nation away from the road to perdition.

The PDP is selling its presidential nomination forms for N40 million, while the APC has fixed its own at N100 million. 

The excuse given is that the parties which will campaign all over the country need adequate financing through the sale of forms to pull it off. Before taking such decisions, political parties must consider the damages they are capable of wreaking in the system when those so extorted find themselves in public office.

is more so as billions of naira more will be spent by the candidates in pursuit of their ambitions. The next president is liable to feel he “bought” the office for profit. Even if the money is contributed by financiers, they will form an oligarchy and hold the president and our economy to ransom.

What it means in graphic terms is that the salary of a putative in-coming APC president will not be able to offset the cost of nomination fee alone even if he forfeits every kobo to pay back the financiers of the nomination form. Nigeria’s president officially earns a total package of N14,058,820 per annum or N56, 235,280 in four years, which is far below the cost of his nomination form.

These mountainous amounts will give aspirants more room to allow faceless “supporters” to finance their ambitions, thus paving the way for money launderers and organised crime to buy into the next government.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, should look into this growing anomaly. Electoral umpires all over the world take the issue of political or campaign financing very seriously to prevent the purchase of government by money heavyweights and thus threaten its capacity to pursue people-oriented programmes.

We expect the INEC to crank its regulatory and monitoring structures into action and arrest this trend.

After 23 years of our return to democracy, political parties should have evolved ways of raising finance through their members rather than the practice of extorting moneybags to bribe members for their votes. 

This is why the party faithful only enjoy a few campaign time crumbs only to languish for the rest of the four-year tenure.

Stop the extortion! Our presidency is not for sale.

Vanguard News Nigeria