One of the presidential aspirants under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adamu Garba II, has withdrawn from the ruling party’s 2023 presidential race.
Gatekeepers News reports that Garba II announced his withdrawal in a statement he personally signed on Tuesday.
The statement read, “I write to notify Nigerians that after high-level deliberation with our campaign team, we have concluded that we will not be obtaining the expression of interest and nomination form for the office of the President of Nigeria under the platform of the APC.”
While explaining why he has chosen to withdraw, Garba II said “Our generation should not set an example as part of the people that supported the financialization/commercialization of our political space, especially the public office, considering the prohibitive cost of the nomination forms.
“We believe this action is capable of over-financializing our political space, institutionalizing vote-buying, encouraging corruption, and complete obliteration the youth and the poor from participation.”
He lamented how concerns were raised on several media fora over the ‘high cost’ of the party’s form, stating that this “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, the strength of the program, 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 the future of 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,” he added.
The statement continued, “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.
“The party, from its convention to this moment, has taken several steps that may dent our democratic credentials as we venture into the third decade of our uninterrupted democracy.
“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.
“Recalled that I had made a similar lamentation to the APC in the run-up to the 2019 election, it appears, with this decision, the party clearly shows that only money matters in who becomes the leader of the largest black nation on earth and not other critical tenets of character required of a 21st-century leader.”
He noted that although he has received over N83m as donations, this will be refunded.
“We have recorded the sum of N81,750,000.00 in private donations and N1,457, 794.70 in online donations. Totaling N83,207,794.70. We sincerely, immensely, and graciously thank everyone for these wonderful contributions and donations, including those who made theirs anonymously.
“We, however, request that all those who donated online and who require a refund send an email with evidence of payment to adamugarba@adamugarba.org. I assure you of a complete refund upon request.
“Those that made private donations, we know them, we will meet them and settle this out.
“Incidentally, if your donations are done for pursuing our course for the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the coming 2023 election, the battle is not over yet. Kindly do bear with us for further directives in the coming days.”
