A former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Lai Olurode, said yesterday that President Muhammadu Buhari should have rejected the N45m approved by the All Progressives Congress as cost of its presidential nomination form.
He said other aspirants, especially the youth, who could not afford the nomination form, had been shut out.
The professor of Sociology at the University of Lagos said this in Lagos yesterday during the annual national conference of Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN), Lagos Area Unit.
“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,” he said.
Olurode 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.”
