Two hundred and fifty million old cedis or twenty five thousand Ghana New Cedis is the figure given by the New Patriotic Party as the nomination fee for its aspiring presidential candidates. That’s roughly US$25,000. By any standard, that’s a lot of money. So far, none of the 17 aspirants has signaled withdrawal from the race due to the inability to raise such a huge initial financial outlay in nomination fees.
It can therefore be argued that wherever they are going to find it, these determined aspirants would do so. Some clearly can afford it and probably more, from their own resources, while others would need a lot of help. That’s just the first step. After the nominations have been filed and accepted, the campaigning would continue in earnest and that would involve even more money.
The preceding point of “continuing” the campaigning is significant because all the aspirants have been campaigning for some months now with reports of money and other incentives in kind being lavished to woo the prospective delegates to the December congress. So it is going to be money, money, money…all the way! But which of these 17 aspirants leads in the money game? The following assessment is based more on public perception and the “behaviour” of some of the aspirants themselves than any verifiable public accounting system.
Source: GhanaWeb
