2019: Buhari should’ve rejected APC's N45million nomination fee - Ex-INEC official

- The N45million presidential nomination fee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is still generating reactions nationwide

- A former national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Lai Olurode, says the fee automatically shut out other aspirants

- He said President Muhammadu Buhari should have rejected the fee

A former national commissioner of INEC, Professor Lai Olurode, on Sunday, September 9, said President Muhammadu Buhari should have rejected the N45million approved by the APC as cost of its presidential nomination form ahead of the 2019 general elections.

He said other aspirants, especially the youth, who could not afford the nomination form, had been shut out by the decision of the ruling party.

The professor of sociology at the University of Lagos said this in Lagos during the annual national conference of Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN), Lagos Area Unit, Daily Trust reports.

“That is a wrong way of opening up the political system. The political space is still restricted, definitely there is no youth that can go, not to talk of the money that you need to even do campaign.

“So before you know it, we are all in the hands of moneybags, and wherever money dictates, you cannot have development. It must be supported with strong ethics and with strong morals. Morals are being checkmated. So there is no opportunity for a young person to go into politics.

“I think the leadership of the country must respond more timeously and strongly to challenges confronting the youth in this country,” Olurode lamented.He also decried the rampant cases of vote buying which he described as unIslamic as “it amounts to distortion of freedom, it amounts to mortgaging your freedom.”