After raising N83m, APC aspirant, Adamu Garba, withdraws from presidential race

Adamu Garba, an All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential aspirant, has withdrawn from contesting the party’s presidential ticket even after managing to raise the sum of N83.2 million out of the N100 million needed to purchase the party’s presidential nomination form.

Garba who announced his withdrawal from the race at a news conference in Abuja on Monday, said he decided to withdraw from the race due to the high cost of obtaining the party’s expression of interest and nomination forms and the cost of running for political office in the country.

When the party had pegged the fee for the forms at N100m, Garba had expressed his dismay at the exorbitant amount and called on Nigerians to help him contribute towards raising the amount to buy the form.

According to a close associate of the budding politician, many Nigerians and those who believed in his vision had been forthcoming with donations and had so far contributed N83.2 million but that the money was still short of the N100 million required for the purchase of the form.

According to him, pegging the presidential form at N100 million would promote financialisation and commercialization of the country’s political space.

At the press conference, Garba said his decision not to obtain APC presidential form followed due consultation with his campaign team, which, he confirmed, had generated N83.2 million in private and online donations.

He, however, promised that the funds would be returned to the donors, adding that he would make known his next political moves in the coming days.

“When we raised this concern on several media fora, the party, however, believed the high cost of form will separate the serious contenders from unserious ones.

Read also :Adamu Garba solicits funds on Twitter for APC N100m Presidential form

“This goes contrary to our belief that you can only separate serious contenders from unserious ones by the competency, capacity, credibility, strength of the programme, workable solutions, and sellable candidate to Nigeria through rapid intraparty debates and other high-level criteria reviews that can ensure we present a better leader for future for Nigeria.

“We further discovered that even if we went ahead to obtain the form, the party has foreclosed the plan for primary election because of the presence of the request for a Letter of Voluntary withdrawal on page 18 of the nomination form.

“I cannot, in all honesty, rally funds from my supporters in the hope that we will be having a primary election, then sign a postdated letter of voluntary withdrawal from the contest,” he said.

Garba also said the APC had taken several steps that may likely dent its democratic credentials in future elections.

“These steps, if not changed, could reverse the gains we make over time and return us back to centrist, sycophantic, patronage-driven unitary systems, a situation we have to avoid at all costs in the interest of the future of Nigeria.

“We believe this action is capable of over financialising our political space, institutionalizing vote-buying, encouraging corruption, and complete obliteration the youth and the poor from participation,” Garba said on the high cost of politics in the country.

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