February 2023 election. It is a season to witness the ascendancy of a massive, multi-billion Naira campaign industry that rivals the national budget. So, how will Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and presidential candidates of other political parties in Nigeria fare in the rat race to outspend one another? Where does each of them hope to secure this breathtaking campaign funding?
Campaign funding or financing is a major and important part of the electoral process. It is the how, when and where political parties and individuals vying for elective offices will raise and spend money with which they will influence political votes in their favour. In developed democracies, campaign financing is a big issue that the state is interested in. This is because it involves major ethical issues that can compromise the integrity of the electoral process.
All over the world, election campaigning is not a tea party. Because money is both spirit and human, money has a mouth, talks, and is a major voice in electoral politics. Elections require considerably huge expenditure. Between the years 2000 and 2012, it was estimated that the total spending in American presidential elections almost doubled from $3.1 billion to $5.8 billion.
To safeguard the integrity of the electoral process, laws are enacted to guide and guard the infiltration of “bad money” into elections. In America and other democracies, violations of these laws carry strict penalties. While private funding of political candidates and political parties by individuals looks harmless enough, it is most times an innocuous channel of funneling drug proceeds and slush funds into the system. Many a time as well, it provides opportunities for individuals and corporations to hold governments by their esophagus. This they do by donating huge amounts of money to candidates and political parties during electioneering and wringing commitments off them for favours of state commitments in policy and funding when elected.
Not lacking in-laws to curtail the infiltration of “bad money” into the electoral process, Nigeria is however acutely lax in implementing these laws. A combination of a political culture that has accepted gifts as normal and a porous banking system that is easily the funnel of unsieved funds are the Achilles’ heel of this menace. Thus, poisonous money is injected into the electioneering process, with very serious implications for the results of elections and the candidates who ultimately become representatives of the people.
For instance, the new Electoral Act 2022 contains very robust sections on campaign financing, ceilings, and penalties for violations of the law. To curb bad money from meandering into campaign financing, Section 90(3) stipulates that “a political party shall not accept any monetary or other contribution which is more than N50,000,000 unless it can identify the source of the money or other contribution to the Commission.”
While in western democracies, the fear is that big corporation and wealthy individuals could wangle their ways into the state purse by stealth and corrupt its system, in Nigeria, the reality is that stolen government money constitutes, at a conservative estimate, 95 percent of funds used to campaign for political offices. The Nigerian system is aware of this, accepts it as fait accompli, and closes its eyes to the numbing reality.
The kind of massive corruption that goes into campaign funding should be an issue of interest to Nigerians. It is the reason why we must be bothered about where Tinubu, Atiku, and Obi, the three major presidential contenders and governors in Nigeria, will secure the multibillion Naira funds they need for the February 2023 election.
From their first day in office, governments in Nigeria begin to ferret the nooks and crannies of the government purses for funds to prosecute their re-election campaigns. In the run-up to the 2015 election, the $2 billion arms deal money, an arms procurement deal of the Nigerian government, eventually morphed into the Dasukigate, a widespread embezzlement ring perpetrated through the office of the National Security Adviser. Officially christened as a fund budgeted for procurement of arms to fight insurgency, it was however an underhand fund for the 2015 elections. Jonathan’s opponent, Major General MuhammaduBuhari confessed his financial incapability and Nigerians applauded him. It should however be written in the Guinness Book of Records that a man who confessed to owning 150 cows could, in the same breath, fund a multibillion Naira election that ensured his win. Later revelations came out that funds used for the campaigns were siphoned from state governments’ purses, as well as from questionable characters in society, to actualize this dream.
During the political party, primaries held a few months back, a top presidential contender was said to have demanded and got the sum of half a billion Naira from a state government for every state he visited to solicit delegates’ support. Kickbacks from contractors, secured through hyperinflation of costs of projects and stolen monies kept in the hands of proxies, find their way into campaign funds immediately after the electioneering process kicks off. Though there is a policy and law backing up a cashless economy that Nigeria claims to be running, the country is still steeped in a Ghana-Must-Go bag economy. Politicians have consistently frustrated the cashless economy policy. This they do by compromising and colluding with bank executives to get out physical cash to prosecute their nocturnal spending. One of its offshoots was a bullion van loaded with cash suddenly appearing in the Lagos home of a leading political baron. Politicians approximate the state.
This is why we must be interested in where the money to be used in prosecuting the 2023 presidential election comes from. A departure from the culture of depending on slush funds from state or federal government to fund campaigns is being devised by Peter Obi of the Labour Party, the man who goes by the sobriquet “he no dey give shishi!” According to the media report, in a bid to raise the sum of $150 million in the Diaspora and N100 billion in Nigeria,, LP has embarked on a tour of Canada and Germany and seven cities in the US, with the aim of raising this campaign fund.
While it is not in the public domain how he wants to source his own fund as well, the candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), OmoyeleSowore is said to be banking on crowd funding from Nigerians and aides from foreign agencies to sustain his campaign financing. The dilemmas both Obi and Sowore would face are, first, that laws forbid foreign donations to campaigns. In America, federal law prohibits “contributions, donations, expenditures, and disbursements solicited, directed, received or made directly or indirectly by or from foreign nationals” in connection to any federal, state, or local election. Section 225 (3 and 4) of the Nigerian constitution is similarly provided. Again, there is the fear that the lax monitoring of the campaign funds system in Nigeria may allow a huge percentage of these funds to go into personal pockets.
While Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) has been flaunting his octopodal business empire with ease, he has not for once mentioned whether it is from this huge purse that his campaign funds will come. It is however public knowledge that the bulk of his campaign funds will come from government money given to him by his loyalist state governors, as well as former and present occupiers of government positions. These monies are federal and state monies funneled out by stealth. Atiku himself has waffled through the sources of his borderless wealth which many allege is linked to the subversion of public financing rules and boring holes into the national till, with pipes fixed to his belly, while he was in public service.
The same goes for the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) Bola Tinubu. On Friday, the Atiku Campaign Office attacked Tinubu by calling him a billionaire without a known business. This is a euphemism similar to what Americans mean when they say, we have seen the bucks, where is the shop? What is being alluded to is the theft of public patrimony for sustenance. To date, though the humongous wealth of Tinubu has kept tongues wagging, no one can say precisely what is its source. Like Atiku, it is said that the bulk of his campaign funds will come from governors in charge of public money in Nigeria, especially those in his APC and individuals who hold cash cow positions in federal and state-owned agencies and corporations.
As the presidential campaigns begin this month, Nigerians must begin to ask their candidates specific questions about how they will finance the elections and specifics of accountability in campaign financing. In developed democracies, a trackable account is opened and a certified accountant is put in charge of the campaign office account. Every penny, whether secured through crowdfunding, or public or private funds, so far it goes into this account and is periodically subjected to the accounting scrutiny of auditing. Not doing this same thing with our candidates and political parties vying for offices in 2023 is akin to opening the doors of Nigeria’s decision-making offices to the god of Mammon. It will also amount to a triumph of the whims of evil forces in society.
Drug monies, laundered funds, and all manner of illicit funds easily find their way into election funds and this constitutes what Yoruba call the kandaninuiresi– the pebbles trapped in a bowl of rice – of electoral politics. It is a pollutant that has spiritual implications of fouling up and contaminating the whole process. As we go into the campaign exercise, valid questions of where, when, and how of campaign funds must be asked and satisfactorily answered.
