Adamu Garba quits presidential ambition after raising over N80m funds

Adamu Garba, a presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC), has announced his withdrawal from the race.

Adamu Garba told reporters in Abuja on Monday that he dropped out of the race because of the hefty expense of acquiring APC expressions of interest and nomination forms for the presidency, as well as the cost of running for political office.

He believes that setting the presidential nomination fee at N100 million will encourage the financialization and commercialization of the country’s political arena.

Adamu Garba claimed he decided not to seek an APC presidential nomination after consulting with his campaign team, which had raised N83.2 million in private and internet donations, according to him.

The money would be refunded to the contributors, he said.

Adamu Garba also stated that he would declare his next political move soon.

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He said, “We believe this action is capable of over financialising our political space, institutionalizing vote-buying, encouraging corruption, and complete obliteration the youth and the poor from participation.

“When we raised this concern on several media fora, the party, however, believed the high cost of form will separate the serious contenders from unserious ones.

“This goes contrary to our belief that you can only separate serious contenders from unserious ones by the competency, capacity, credibility, strength of the programme, workable solutions, and sellable candidate to Nigeria through rapid intraparty debates and other high-level criteria reviews that can ensure we present a better leader for future for Nigeria.

“We further discovered that even if we went ahead to obtain the form, the party has foreclosed the plan for primary election because of the presence of the request for a Letter of Voluntary withdrawal on page 18 of the nomination form.

“I cannot, in all honesty, rally funds from my supporters in the hope that we will be having a primary election, then sign a postdated letter of voluntary withdrawal from the contest.”

He said APC had taken several steps that may likely dent its democratic credentials.

“These steps, if not changed, could reverse the gains we make over time and return us back to centrist, sycophantic, patronage-driven unitary systems, a situation we have to avoid at all costs in the interest of the future of Nigeria,” he said.