Kano LG polls: PDP to appeal Court judgment on INEC charges

By Our Correspondent

Kano State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has reacted angrily to the verdict delivered by a Kano State High Court on Tuesday over the Saturday local government election.
Acting Chief Judge of the state, Justice Nura dismissed PDP’s case challenging Kano State Independent Electoral Commission’s (KANSIEC) regarding the charges for forms and tax clearance.
The commission had announced N250, 000 and N150, 000 as charges for contest forms and tax clearance for chairmanship candidates and N150, 000 and N110, 000 for councillorship candidates.
PDP Chairman in the state, Senator Mas’ud El-Jibril Doguwa, yesterday said his party would appeal the judgment.
“We are going to appeal the verdict to stop future abuse of democracy and electoral system where government in power will put high levies on opposition political parties in order to frustrate them.
“If we allow this to go unchecked, subsequent governments will continue to impose high levies on political parties during elections.
“We have discovered that the commission has distributed free contest forms and given some token amount of money to some opposition political parties to enable their candidates contest in the forthcoming local government elections.
“The commission wanted to use PDP’s money to conduct the LG elections,” he told Daily Trust.
Doguwa said the Kano State Government should not expect PDP to pay “such an exorbitant amount under the current harsh economic situation which the APC-led government put Nigerians.”