- A fresh party has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of using tax clearance threats to scare other opposition parties
- The party said most prospective members drop out because they have been unable to raise the funds to process the tax clearance
- The Young Democratic (YDP) which was registered less than a year ago said it is sure it would do well in the nine councils
A party has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of using tax clearance to scare other opposition parties.
The Young Democratic (YDP), said the PDP foists tax clearance as a requirement for candidates as a way of suppressing competition in various council areas.
The chairman of the YDP, Festus Ofume, said while fielding candidates in 25 local government areas of the state were forced to drop out because they were unable to raise the funds to process the tax clearance.
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Ofume said: “Initially, we had candidates coming for all 25 chairmanship positions but when the matter of tax clearance came up it became a huge setback and we think that the ruling party used it as a move to eliminate those people they think will give them competition.”
Ofume said was hopeful that the YDP which was registered less than a year ago would do well in the nine councils.
“We are expecting that our political party and some of our candidates would emerge victorious that is if the authorities actually conduct the election in a free and fair manner.
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If it is done that way we are very hopeful that Young Democratic Party, would be able to emerge victorious in the areas that we are featuring candidates in the council elections.
“You know the party is a young political party which is barely a year old and one of the problems we had was the tactics of the state government trying to disqualify potential candidates using provisions which are outside the constitution," Ofume said.
He also said the authorities were asking that each candidate must show evidence of tax clearance for three years.
"And in preparing that tax clearance you would need nothing less than N100,000 to do that and most of our candidates are just fresh university graduates who have the followership but do not have that kind of money and that is why they were discouraged,” he said.
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NAIJ.com earlier reported that the minister of mines and steel development, Kayode Fayemi, has said declared that Nigerians will still reject PDP and its corrupt antecedents in 2019.
He said the attempt being made by the party to reclaim power in 2019 as a ploy to continue to loot the country’s resources.
The minister also advised Nigerians not to use the current fuel scarcity in the country to rate President Muhammadu Buhari’s performances.
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Source: Naija.ng