• Says fees illegal, unconstitutional, highest globally
• Accuses Buhari of abandoning fight against corruption
A lawyer and human rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN), has faulted the nomination form fees imposed on aspirants by various political parties, describing same as illegal and unconstitutional.
The legal icon said there was a subsisting judgment that any conditionality stipulated outside the constitution, such as nomination fees, is illegal.
Falana, therefore, described the fees imposed by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the highest in the world.
Besides, he accused the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration of abandoning the fight against corruption by granting the two convicted former governors, Jolly Nyame and Joshua Dariye, state pardon.
Falana spoke at the weekend in his country home in Ilawe-Ekiti at a ceremony marking the 10th coronation anniversary of the monarch, Oba Ajibade Alabi.
According to him, the nomination fees pegged by APC and PDP showed that members of the political class operate outside the political terrain.
On the pardon granted the two former governors, the Lagos lawyer condemned the reasons adduced for their pardon, saying: “There are convicts in the prisons who are much older than Nyame and Dariye.”
“The government has been given different reasons for their release but what is important is that the Buhari administration has abandoned the fight against corruption.
“The pardon extended to the two former governors is an infinitesimal part of the abandonment of the anti-corruption war. There are those who have stolen billions of naira whose cases had been withdrawn from courts by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, who simply filed nole proseque.
“There are others who are discharged by the courts on technical ground and not that they didn’t steal huge sums of money. It was established in court that huge sums were stolen, but the suspects have been asked to go home and enjoy their loots.
“As far as the government is concerned, the pardon is just an extension of abandoning and embracing corruption. They used the anti-corruption war to deceive Nigerians. As soon as the government got established, little by little, the whole anti-corruption crusade collapsed.”
Source: Guardian.ng
