Aspirants contesting for various posts under the platform of the All Progressive Grand Alliance in the 2023 general election have bemoaned the high cost of the party’s nomination and expression of interest forms.
Vanguard reports that the party’s leadership had pegged the expression of interest form for the office of the President at N5 million and its nomination form at N20 million, making a total of N25 million.
For governorship, both forms were sold for a total of N15 million, while the senate form went for N10 million.
It was gathered that APGA also sold House of Representatives forms for N7 million and the House of Assembly’s forms went for N2.5 million.
The aspirants lamented that such a high cost of forms was capable of discouraging members from contesting under the banner of the party they had always loved, arguing that the forms, when compared with those of the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, were too exorbitant.
Some of the aspirants also feared that such development was an invitation for the moneybags of the APC and the PDP to “invade the party and hijack power.”
“The effect is that PDP members most of them currently serving members have besieged the party leadership to contest election under the platform of APGA as it is obvious that party faithful in the state cannot afford the amounts set by the National Working Committee of the party,” one of the aspirants spoke anonymously.
One of them noted, “APGA is seen as the only party that will win the 2023 elections in Abia due to the collapse of APC and unpopularity of PDP which has held onto power for 24 years in the state,” following the signing of the Electoral Act, 2022.
He added, “the problems bedeviling PDP have compounded the zoning of its governorship position which has polarized party membership in the state.
“Not just Abia, other states in the South East are also complaining. The South West, South-South, and Northern states may be forced by this unaffordable cost of party forms to dump APGA.”
He equally appealed to Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State to wade into the matter in his capacity as the National Leader of APGA.
It was gathered that, when contacted, the Deputy National Chairman of APGA (South), Chief Uchenna Okogbuo, said the pegging of the cost of the forms was a collective decision of the party’s national executives, and could not be reversed.
Okogbuo said that the party would not want to make its nomination and expression of interest forms so cheap to avoid giving their tickets to unserious candidates who after securing the ticket, lack the capacity to execute their election.
“We want you to buy our forms and prosecute your election. We don’t want to give our tickets to people who are not strong enough to execute their campaign.
“If we make it so cheap, some people will just come and collect the forms and become sellouts, thereby jeopardizing the interest of the party.
“We also want to avoid a scenario in Abia State in 2015 where we had over 15 members of the party in the state House of Assembly only for them to decamp later. We don’t want to give our tickets to people who when they win the election will easily decamp when they see the money.
“If you want to contest the election, you must have a second address. We can’t give out tickets to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who won’t know its value,” Okogbuo added.
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