The ruling Peoples Democratic Party has made more than N3bn from the sales of its nomination and expression of interest forms to interested political office seekers since the commencement of the exercise, which ends Thursday November 6, according to Punch investigation.
The sale of the forms was to end last Friday, but it was extended by one week with the hope that many of its members would still purchase forms.
The party collected N22m from its Presidential aspirants, while its governorship aspirants paid N11m each.
Each senatorial aspirant in the party paid N4.5m and those running for the House of Representatives were asked to pay N2.5m.
For those aspiring to go to state Houses of Assembly, they were charged N1.2m each.
Unlike before, the party charged female aspirants for the expression of interest forms but were excempted from paying for nomination forms.
The amounts realised from the sales of forms are to be shared among the three arms of the party.
They are national secretariat (80 per cent), state chapters (15 per cent) while the zonal offices are to receive five per cent.
The bulk of the money made is however from the over 234 governorship aspirants across the country. The party was said to have made N2.684bn from them.
However, 11 of the aspirants are females while the rest are males.
So far, only two aspirants have paid the mandatory N22m for presidential nomination forms.
They are President Goodluck Jonathan and Dr. Abdul-Jhalil Tafawa-Balewa.
The third presidential aspirant in the party, Prof. Akasoba Duke-Abiola, a female, paid N2m.
Many aspirants, such as governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives and others, were said to have picked up their forms from their states after the payment of the prescribed amount.
The party, in a notice signed by the National Organising Secretary, Alhaji Abubakar Mustapha, to the members of the party, said political office seekers were free to pick up their forms from their state chapters of the party.
He, however, insisted that such aspirants must show evidence of payment of the prescribed fees for the office such an aspirant is seeking.
Information from the party secretariat indicated that Imo State had the highest number of governorship hopefuls with 19 aspirants.
Three of them are females.
The oil-rich Delta State is second, with 18 governorship aspirants, but three of them are also females.
A party official, who is among those responsible for the sale of the forms said, “This is the best period” for the party. We are not only making money, we are happy to be here.”
In Plateau State, over 150 aspirants have also picked nomination forms to contest in the 2015 general elections in the ruling party, according to the party’s state Organising Secretary, Mr. Michael Dachom.
Dachom told the News Agency of Nigeria in Jos on Monday that 11 of the aspirants, including the current Deputy Governor, Ignatius Longjan, picked forms for governorship while 40 others were for National Assembly and 100 for state assembly seats.
Source: Punch