₦airaland Forum

Someone who understands this, should please enlighten me on same subject because I don't seem to comprehend it all.
I have just read that APC in Anambra state has decided to peg their Governorship form at N50M. That's a whooping sum to some of us who haven't seen, touched or had such amount in our lives.
My Question is why would a contestant who knows he CAN'T win go on to buy a form in order to contest?. Is it that these monies are refunded to them after the primaries that a winner would have emerged? Cos I'm really baffled. They even go on to campaign round. What's the sense in all these?

Last year, it was the turn of my clan to become the local govt chairman of my council. This particular clan had never been the chairman since the creation of the local govt. The chairmanship form was pegged at N6million and over 20 aspirants bought the forms. We the youths advised the aspirants to step down and have a consensus candidate so as to avoid waste of funds. Since APC is the ruling party in the state, we knew already that whoever the governor picks is automatically the chairman of my Council as elections are only for formality. But nobody agreed to step down for anyone. This is a clan that has lacks basic social amenities like power, road and mobile network. The poorest clan in this country if I May say. These funds would have been better used to empower the locals, but due to greed, they all bought and wasted these funds. In the end, it was one of the aspirants who didn't even buy the form that won the primaries and eventually became the chairman. He was handpicked by the Member HoR and introduced to the governor and that was all.

Emefiele too coughed out N100m to buy that paper called form. Wonderment.

If them play their game well, the eventual winner go compensate them wella.

It's just a way of dividing the opponents votes, it's a tactic usually employed by one of the opponents less likely to win

We can look at it this way: Let's say there are 100 voters and 3 key contestants who are likely to get votes in the ratio of A - 40 voters B - 40 voters and C - 20 voters.
Contestant C knowing fully well his chances of getting enough delegates (just about 20% of the delegates which is not enough to win the primaries), decides to sponsor like 5 other candidates (pay for their forms plus other incentives).
If each of these voters can manage to manage to even get as little as even 5 voters each who will pledge to vote for them, that's a total of 25 voters already that has been taken from contestants A & B.
Just before the actual election these 5 new contestants will suddenly decide to drop out of the race and "encourage" all their voters (total of 25 ) to support contestant C, who now has a total of 20 + 25 = 45 votes while A & B end up sharing 55 votes between them.

At the end of the day all the money spent in pulling this off is recovered from the government purse.

thesicilian:
It's just a way of dividing the opponents votes, it's a tactic usually employed by one of the opponents less likely to win

We can look at it this way: Let's say there are 100 voters and 3 key contestants who are likely to get votes in the ratio of A - 40 voters B - 40 voters and C - 20 voters.
Contestant C knowing fully well his chances of getting enough delegates (just about 20% of the delegates which is not enough to win the primaries), decides to sponsor like 5 other candidates (pay for their forms plus other incentives).
If each of these voters can manage to manage to even get as little as even 5 voters each who will pledge to vote for them, that's a total of 25 voters already that has been taken from contestants A & B.
Just before the actual election these 5 new contestants will suddenly decide to drop out of the race and "encourage" all their voters (total of 25 ) to support contestant C, who now has a total of 20 + 25 = 45 votes while A & B end up sharing 55 votes between them.

At the end of the day all the money spent in pulling this off is recovered from the government purse.

Great analogy.
Thanks

thesicilian:
It's just a way of dividing the opponents votes, it's a tactic usually employed by one of the opponents less likely to win

We can look at it this way: Let's say there are 100 voters and 3 key contestants who are likely to get votes in the ratio of A - 40 voters B - 40 voters and C - 20 voters.
Contestant C knowing fully well his chances of getting enough delegates (just about 20% of the delegates which is not enough to win the primaries), decides to sponsor like 5 other candidates (pay for their forms plus other incentives).
If each of these voters can manage to manage to even get as little as even 5 voters each who will pledge to vote for them, that's a total of 25 voters already that has been taken from contestants A & B.
Just before the actual election these 5 new contestants will suddenly decide to drop out of the race and "encourage" all their voters (total of 25 ) to support contestant C, who now has a total of 20 + 25 = 45 votes while A & B end up sharing 55 votes between them.

At the end of the day all the money spent in pulling this off is recovered from the government purse.

You are a good political analyst.
This is exactly what played out in the last PDP presidential primaries election.
It was obvious that the likes of Aminu Tambuwal never had a genuine intentions to run for the presidential election.
Kudo's to you.