APC aspirant demands nomination fee refund
One of the aspirants who participated in the March 26, 2022, national convention of the All Progressives Congress, Sunny Moniedafe, has dragged the Abdullahi Ganduje-led party leadership to court over its failure to refund his expression of interest and nomination form fees.
The case will come up for hearing at an Abuja High Court tomorrow, Monday, October 28.
Monidafe confirmed the development in an exclusive chat with Sunday PUNCH.
The Adamawa APC chieftain said he was compelled to file the lawsuit to recoup his nomination fee because of certain exigencies.
The lawsuit came two years after the aggrieved aspirants were asked to step down for the immediate past National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, and other members of the National Working Committee.
According to Monidafe, despite the directive by former president Muhammed Buhari to refund their money for stepping down for Adamu and his NWC members, the ruling party has stoutly refused to reimburse them.
Monidafe said, “God knows we tried our best by not making this matter public for this long. We have written, visited, and pleaded even with the party’s current leadership since Dr Abdullahi Ganduje took over. The last time I went there in the company of Barrister Adebayo Shittu and some chieftains to plead with them to no avail.
“We can’t continue like this. Let the world know our plight and acknowledge that we have tried our best. It is not fair. That’s why I had to take the legal approach. At least, now they can come to the court and officially tell Nigerians their position. It was even because of this issue we created a platform to keep communicating with ourselves.”
Some of the affected politicians who spoke in separate interviews with our correspondent lamented that they had explored and exhausted all available options to get their money back.
Depending on the category of the expression of interest and nomination forms, the 107 aspirants who contested various positions for the composition of the NWC paid between N20m and N25m each.
At the end of the exercise, APC raked in over N700m with an additional N3bn generated among stakeholders and party members ahead of the presidential primary.
In one of the letters written to Adamu dated June 21, 2022, and appended by 107 signatories, the aggrieved aspirants accused the party of excluding them from active participation and assignments at the last party primaries for the election of various candidates.
Responding to the development in a phone interview, National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka, told Sunday PUNCH that the matter has been receiving attention and would be resolved soon.
