These are certainly the best of times for the Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the sales of nomination forms to aspirants contesting for the party tickets for coming local government elections in the state has made the party richer by at least N1.192 billion, reports The Gazelle News.com.
Chairmanship aspirants paid N2 million each to buy the nomination form while the councillorship aspirants each parted with N500, 000 to purchase the nomination forms.
A total of 333 chairmanship aspirants across the three senatorial districts purchased the nomination forms totalling N666 million while a total of 1053 councillorship aspirants paid N526.5 million to purchase the nomination forms.
Councillorship aspirants from Amuwo Odofin local government paid the highest in that category as the 40 aspirants paid N20 million. Mushin with its 34 councillorship aspirants followed with N17 million, Apapa-Iganmu Local Council Development Area with 32 aspirants followed with N16 million with 30 aspirants who all paid N15 million to the covers of the party.
For the Chairmanship election, Coker-Aguda LCDA has 21 aspirants all of whom paid N42 million to purchase nomination forms; Ifelodun LCDA has 17 aspirants all paying N34 million while the trio of Amuwo-Odofin, Ifako-Ijaiye and Oshodi Isolo LGs each has 12 aspirants, translating to N24 million from each councils going into the covers of the party.
As expected, the Lagos West Senatorial District, being the largest senatorial district in the state accounted for the lion share of the money paid to purchase nomination forms by both chairmanship and councillorship aspirants for the coming election.
For the councillorshp election, a total of 538 aspirants applied to run paying N269 million while 163 aspirants applied to contest for the chairmanship seats in the district all paying N326 million.
Lagos East Senatorial District followed with 282 councillorshp aspirants paying N141 million and 87 chairmanship aspirants from the senatorial district paying a total of N174 million.
Lagos Central Senatorial District has 226 councillorship aspirants who all paid N113 million while the 83 chairmanship aspirants from the senatorial district paid a total of N116 million to purchase the nomination form.
This is apart from the N150,000 each chairmanship aspirant paid for expression of interest and N50,000 each councillorship aspirant for expression of interest.
The Gazelle News.com learnt that the leadership of the party did not expect such huge turn out of aspirants.
However, a political observer told this medium that the aspirants may have been encouraged by the decision of the party to ensure a level playing ground for all aspirants to test their popularity with party members in a direct primary.
“Majority of the aspirants have absolute confidence in the Hamzat led Election Committee put up by the party hence they have hope of a free and fair primary election,” our source added.
