The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Nasarawa State has announced the boycott of the Saturday, November 2, 2024 local government elections in the State.
The opposition party cited the outrageous registration fee of the sum of N1.5m imposed on each participating candidate by the Nasarawa State Independent Electoral Commission (NASIEC) as reason for its decision.
The party also decried the alleged failure of the state government to amend the State Electoral Law to allow for the announcement of election results of councillorship position at the Ward level and that of the chairmanship position at the Local Government headquarters, respectively.
It noted that the resolve of the state government to disregard repeated calls for the review of the law meant an alleged attempt to manipulate the process in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The party made these known in a communique signed by its secretary, Mr. Adamu Bako Ninga, and publicity secretary, Mohammed Hamza respectively which it issued at the end of its State Executive Committee (SEC) meeting in Lafia on Friday.
It said both the ruling party and the electoral empire had displayed apparent insensitivity amid the prevailing economic challenges the state and the country have been grappling with.
According to the PDP, fixing such an amount of money as tentative fee for nomination forms is unacceptable and unrealistic.
The communique read in part: “Asking our people to pay N1.5m fixed by NASIEC as cost of candidate’s registration is not the issue, but the contending issue here is that the process is a clear indication that the APC led government is insensitive to the effect of the economic hardship on people as well as to bar common man from participation in the Local Government election.
“We are boycotting the forthcoming Local councils elections in Nasarawa state because NASIEC didn’t give the opposition parties substantial reasons to build confidence on the credibility, assurance of fairness and equity”, the Communique alleges.
“The State Executive Committee (SEC) Meeting which was held in the attendance with majority of members after an intensive deliberations on key issues of the moments, unanimously agreed that the inability of the Nasarawa State government to amend the State Electoral Bill to allow the announcement of election results of councillorship positions at the Ward level and that of the chairmanship at the Local Government headquarters respectively a pointer to elections manipulation, avenue for rigging.
“Since this has not been done, it then mean that it’s going to be business as usual for the APC to ambush other political parties with unimaginable electoral frauds.
“Therefore, PDP cannot afford to waste her precious time, energy nor cheaply allow the innocent commoners to waste their energy and resources going into election that the results and the winners are already scripted. PDP had last election raised this kind of observation where the governor promised fair, just and credible election but turned around with NASIEC to do something else.”
