APC spokesman: Why aspire to be president if you can’t raise N100m?

Felix Morka, national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says anyone aspiring to be president should have the “sufficient base” to raise N100 million.

He said this on Monday when he was interviewed during a programme on Silverbird Television.

The APC had fixed N100 million for its nomination and expression of interest forms for persons interested in contesting the presidency on the party’s platform.

Speaking on the form fees, Morka said although the price appears high when one considers the Nigerian setting, presidential hopefuls should have the necessary support to raise such an amount.

“I hate to use the US as an example. The ability to raise funds is a clear criterion whether or not you are eligible to participate at the primaries and the debate especially. You aspire to run for the highest office in the land, you should have some appeal, some reach to members of the party. Sell your ideas, sell your vision. Forty-five million people giving you N1, do the math and see what it comes to. That is a lot of money. We do have that possibility,” he said.

“But for those who have the money already, they are quite welcome to use their own funds. The party has commitments and we do not have any statutory funding as you know.

“Within the context of Nigeria, N100 million is a lot of money. Those who seek the office around the country are expected to have a sufficient base, otherwise why would you aspire to be president, if you are that obscure or unsupportable by your party members and the electorate?”

He also said although the country has challenges with security, the ruling party has delivered on its promises.

On assuming office in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari promised to tackle insecurity, revamp the economy and wage war against corruption.

Speaking on the development, Morka said some people are trying to “cloud” the achievements of the current government.

“The administration has done extremely well on all of those three counts (economy, security and anti-corruption fight) without question,” the spokesman said.

“I know there is a lot of smoke out there and sections of our society cloud some of our stellar accomplishments of this government, whether you are looking at infrastructure or the fundamentals of this economy which is by the way projected — GDP to grow by 3.5 percent in the assessment by IMF. That is significant. We went into recession shortly after COVID-19 but we came out of it rather rapidly.

“On this issue of national security, we have challenges no doubt, but the government is doing everything that is possible within the availability of our resources to deal with these problems.”