The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ebonyi State has announced a N30 million nomination form fee for aspirants seeking to contest for local government chairmanship positions in the state.
The disclosure was made by the APC State Chairman, Stanley Okoro Emegha, who briefed journalists in Abakaliki after a closed-door meeting with party officials drawn from across the state.
The meeting reportedly involved the party’s 13 Local Government Chairmen as well as 171 Electoral Ward chairmen and secretaries, BusinessDay reports.
Emegha explained that the gathering was convened to familiarise party executives with upcoming APC programmes and to ensure smooth and effective information flow across all levels of the party’s organisational structure.
He noted that the party leadership considered it necessary to align stakeholders ahead of future political activities in the state.
In a related development on Friday, Osborn Umahi, son of the Minister of Works, Engr. Dave Umahi, was reported to have picked the APC local government chairmanship nomination form for Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State.
His emergence reportedly attracted attention at the APC Secretariat, where supporters were said to have trooped to witness the purchase of the form.
The nomination form for the chairmanship position is pegged at N30 million, a figure that has continued to draw scrutiny when compared with the official earnings of local government chairmen in the country.
A check on data from the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) indicates that even if an APC candidate is elected as a local government chairman in Ebonyi State and chooses not to spend any portion of his or her salary and allowances, the official earnings over a four-year tenure would still fall short of the cost of the nomination form.
According to the RMAFC salary and allowance scale, a local government chairman earns an annual salary of N3.5 million, while allowances amount to about N2.7million per year.
This brings the total annual earnings to approximately N6.3 million. Over a four-year term, the cumulative earnings would amount to N25.2million, which is significantly lower than the N30 million required for the nomination form alone.
Nigeria has over time been reported as heavily corrupt, with elected officials frequently accused of siphoning public funds meant for development, a concern that continues to trail high-cost political nomination processes.
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