The Kano State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will appeal the verdict delivered by a Kano State High Court on Tuesday on the fees charged for contest forms in the state’s local government elections scheduled for February 10, 2018.
The PDP Chairman in the state, Senator Mas’ud El-Jibril Doguwa, told Daily Trust yesterday that appealing the judgement was necessary in order to save democracy and the electoral system.
Doguwa said, “We are going to appeal the verdict to stop future abuse of democracy and electoral system where government in power will put high levies on opposition political parties in order to frustrate them. If we allow this to go unchecked, subsequent governments will continue to impose high levies on political parties during elections.
“We have discovered that the commission has distributed free contest forms and given some token amount of money to some opposition political parties to enable their candidates contest in the forthcoming local government elections. The commission wanted to use PDP’s money to conduct the LG elections,” he alleged.
Doguwa said the Kano State Government should not expect PDP to pay “such an exorbitant amount under the current harsh economic situation which the APC-led government put Nigerians into.”
He also faulted the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission’s (KANSIEC’s) stand on the announcement of elections, saying there was no place in the Electoral Act that said election results should not be announced until after two days.
On whether PDP would participate in the elections on Saturday, he said the party would soon make its stand known to the public.
The Acting Chief Judge of the state, Justice Nura Sagir, on Tuesday, dismissed PDP’s case challenging KANSIEC regarding the charges of contest forms and tax clearance.
The commission had announced N250, 000 and N150, 000 as charges for contest forms and tax clearance for chairmanship candidates and N150, 000 and N110, 000 for councillorship candidates.
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