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Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, where will multibillion campaign funds come from? By Festus Adebayo

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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.

 

Strictly Personal

Off we go again with public shows, humbug and clowning, By Jenerali Uliwengu

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The potential contestants in the approaching elections are already sizing themselves up and assessing their chances of fooling their people enough for them to believe that they are truly going to “bring development” to them.

 

I mean, you have to be a true believer to believe that someone who says they have come to offer their services to you as your representative in the local council or in the national parliament and they tell you that they are going to build your roads to European standards, and your schools are going to be little Eatons; your hospitals are going to be better and more lavishly equipped than the Indian hospitals, where many of our high-placed people go for treatment, and your water supply will be so regular that you have to worry only about drowning!

 

I mean no exaggeration here, for the last time we had the occasion to listen to such clowns — five years ago — we heard one joker promise he would take all his voters to the United States for a visit.

 

He was actually voted to parliament, or at least the cabal acting as the electoral commission says he was. He has never revisited that promise as far as I can remember, but that must surely be because he is still negotiating with the American embassy for a few million visas for his voters!

 

Yes, really, these are always interesting times, when normally sober people turn out to be raving mad and university dons become illiterate.

 

Otherwise tell me how this can happen: Some smart young man or woman shows up in your neighbourhood and puts up posters and erects stands and platforms for the campaign and goes around the constituency declaring his or her ardent desire to “develop” your area by bringing in clean and safe water, excellent schools, competent teachers, the best agricultural experts as extension officers, etc, etc.

These goodies

At the time this clown is promising all these goodies, you realise he has been distributing money and items such as tee-shirts, kitenge prints, khangas, caps as well as organising feeding programmes, where everyone who cares can feed to satiation and drink whatever they want with practically no limitation.

Seriously, I have been asking myself this question: Would you employ a young man who shows up at your front porch and tells you he is seeking a job to develop your garden and tells you that, while you are thinking whether to employ him, “Here is money for you and your family to eat and drink for now!”

Now, if we think such a man should be reported to the police or taken to a mental institution, why are we behaving in exactly the same way?

Many a time we witness arguments among countrymen trying to solve the conundrum of our continued failure to move forward economically, despite our abundant resources, and it seems like we haven’t got a clue.

But is this not one of the cues, if not probably the most important clue, that we have not found a way to designate our leaders?

It ought to be clear to any person above childhood that this type of electoral system and practice can never deliver anything akin to development or progress.

Now, consider that we have being doing this same thing over and over — in many of our countries elections follow a certain periodicity like clockwork — but we have not discovered the truth.

Put simply, our politics is badly rigged against our people, and elections have become just devices to validate the political hooliganism of the various cabals running our countries like so many Mafia families.

Knee-jerk supporters

We have so demeaned our people, whom we have turned into knee-jerk supporters of whoever gives them food and drink around election time, that now they say that at least at election time it is their turn to eat, which means, naturally, that at all other times it is the turn of the ones who “bring development” to the people.

Clearly, this is not working, and it is no wonder that dissatisfaction and frustration are rife, as our people cannot put a finger to the thing that holds them back.

Apart from these sham elections, from time to time, the rulers organise shows designed to make the people believe that somebody is concerned about their problems.

We have one such masquerade happening in Tanzania right now, where public meetings are organised so people can vent their frustration. But these will never solve any problems; they are just shows.

If the elections we have been holding had any substance, there would not be any need for such public shows, except those organised by those people we elected.

Where are they? What is the use of spending so much money and other resources to erect and maintain a political system that has to be propped by public shows, where people come to vent their grievances over the hopelessness of the system in place?

I am just asking.

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Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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