One of the presidential aspirants on the APC platform, Adamu Garba, left the party on Tuesday over the N100 million cost of its presidential nomination and expression of interest forms. Garba said the humongous sum was tantamount to commercialisation of the APC presidential ticket.
Garba announced his defection from APC on Tuesday, saying he would disclose his new party within the next few days. He advised those who had contributed money to his campaign to seek refund immediately.
Garba spoke at a news conference in Abuja.
He said, “We have recorded the sum of N81, 750,000.00 in private donations and N1, 457, 794.70 in online donations, totalling N83, 207,794.70.
“We sincerely, immensely, and graciously thank everyone for these wonderful contributions and donations, including those who made theirs anonymously.
“We, however, request that all those who donated online and who require a refund send an email with evidence of payment to adamugarba@adamugarba.org. I assure you of a complete refund upon request.
“Those that made private donations, we know them, we will meet them and settle this out.”
Garba added, “Incidentally, if your donations are done for pursuing our course for the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the coming 2023 election, the battle is not over yet. Kindly do bear with us for further directives in the coming days.
“I deeply, immensely appreciate my supporters, friends, well-wishers, and the well-meaning Nigerian youth who contributed unceasingly to this journey.”
He alleged that the Senator Abdullahi Adamu-led National Working Committee (NWC) of APC had commercialised the process leading to the emergence of a credible candidate for the party in the 2023 presidential election.
He also expressed fear that the leadership of the party could further compromise the process with the inclusion of the voluntary withdrawal form in the nomination and expression of interest forms.
Garba predicted that the NWC might adopt consensus to pick an anointed candidate and ask other aspirants, who had obtained forms with N100 million, to seek refund.
He maintained that the NWC’s latest directive that statutory delegates must sign the forms of the aspirants had automatically made the party’s ticket accessible only to the highest bidder.
According to Garba, “Information at our disposal has it that some aspirants are paying as much as N50, 000 to each statutory delegate to get their forms signed.
“After high-level deliberation with our internal campaign team, we have concluded that we will not be obtaining the expression of interest and nomination form for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria under the platform of the APC.”
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