Some political parties in Adamawa have declared free nomination forms for women and physically challenged aspirants ahead of the Council Polls in the state scheduled for June this year
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the parties are All Progressives Congress (APC), People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and People’s Democratic Movement (PDM).
The state chairman of APC, Alhaji Ibrahim Bilal said that it was the policy of the party to give the forms free to disadvantaged groups such as women and physically challenged to encourage them participates in the elections.
Bilal said unlike the women and physically challenged, others were paying N500, 000 for chairmanship nomination form while councillorship aspirants were to pay N150, 000.
He said that due to popular demand, deadline for the sales of forms had been extended from last Friday to Wednesday, April 20th.
The state Organizing Secretary of PDP, Alhaji Abdullahi Prambe, who also urged women to come out and participate, said the party had approved free forms for women and physically challenged.
“We always have special consideration for women and the physically challenged.” he said.
Prambe explained that the party would flag-off its sales of forms tomorrow (Tuesday), adding that apart with the exception of women and physically challenged, other chairmanship councillorship aspirants would pay N170, 000 .00 and N55, 000.00 respectively.
Mallam Sa’ad Maiyaki, the state chairman of PDM, who also declared free nomination forms for women and physically challenged, said other aspirants are paying N100, 000 for chairmanship and N50, 000 for councillorship.
“We have commenced sales of nomination forms but women are to be given free as part of our party commitment to encourage women participation.”, Maiyaki said.
Reacting to the development, a cross section of women lauded the gesture but observed that the parties needed to do more, like reserving certain percentage of elective positions for women.
“It is a good starting point but women need something like allocation of certain percentage of elective position if they are to make any impact in Nigerian type of politics.” Ms Jummai Baba, a female politician said. (NAN)