By Abubakar Yunusa
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has told the All Progressives Congress (APC) to shut up and cover their faces in shame for trying to create phantom justification for why the party pegged its nomination fee and expression of interest form at N100 million.
HURIWA said the ruling party must be made up of leaders that have lost touch with reality and are bent on selling their presidential ticket to the highest bidder no matter how roguish or criminally the person may have raised the exorbitant cost of the nomination fees.
The rights group asked the National Publicity Secretary of the APC to shut up and stop celebrating his ignorance in trying to buy credibility for the criminal decision of his party.
HURIWA noted that the combined total of the salaries of Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbanjo for eight years is not near enough that amount.
“No decent businessman can fritter N100 million on a project he is only going to compete with others and may not enjoy the right of refunds,” HURIWA said, adding that “only drug barons and armed robbers can run for the Presidency under the All Progressives Congress.”
Recall that the APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka had said that the ruling party advised itself on the price tags on its nomination forms after it was reported yesterday that the party had fixed the presidential nomination form for N100m.
HURIWA in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: “We beg of the grossly disrespectful PRO of the APC to stop insulting the psyche and intelligence of Nigerians by trying to provide fallacious justification for this ill-advised decision of his party,”
“APC is behaving like a political gathering of daylight robbers, they are making N100 million look cheap when a Permanent Secretary in the civil service may need two lifetimes to gross that amount as legitimate salaries.
HURIWA maintained that the APC is wrong to fix their ticket for Presidential form at such a price, adding that it depicts the party as a collective of shylock and greedy cash chasing money guzzling political gamblers who are in politics for the cash they can loot.
“There is no logical justification for such crazy fees because it is even a violation of the NOT TOO YOUNG TO RUN LAW which the President signed,” the group insisted.
HURIWA said the high fees show that APC is telling us that only looters can afford their tickets, insisting that “Nigerians must come out and condemn this show of shame and the promotion of ostentatious appearances and inordinate wealth”.
“Who is that youth that can afford 50% of the N100 million fees if the APC is saying youths would get a rebate?”
They noted that even when youths, women or people with disabilities manage to get such an amount for a nomination form, the APC has succeeded in legalising corruption and looting of the nation’s treasury and they would, by all means, focus on gaining back their money.
