With less than 30 days to the commencement of the general elections, political parties appear to be in serious dilemma as they are finding it extremely difficult to raise funds for their campaigns.
Generally, events leading to the elections are very low, slippery and less interesting.
Though the Independent National Electoral Commission lifted the ban on political campaigns since December 2018, the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, only inaugurated its campaign council just a few days to the presidential election.
Even the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party’s campaigns have remained uncoordinated and the party has continued to criticise the APC of not campaigning at all.
Recall that in the run up to the 2015 general elections, the PDP contributed to the traceable expenditure of the election with N8.74 billion while the other opposition parties were said to have spent N2.9 billion to contest the elections.
The stated amount were expenses for media advertisement alone and did not take into consideration the other funds that exchanged hands.
But in the build up to the 2019 elections, media advertisements are hardly visible.
A member of a group, Friends of Atiku, Mr Pedro Obasete, said this time was supposed to be a “Christmas season” with high revenue for the media but that it had turned to a “Lenten season” as the media seemed not to be having enough political patronage in form of advertisements as they did in the build up to previous elections.
Aside from the opposition parties, the ruling APC also appears to be struggling to fund its campaign.
It was gathered that the Treasury Single Account policy, which ensured that all monies accruing to the government were channelled into a single account, had limited the amount parastatals and their heads had at their disposal to contribute to the campaign spending of the ruling party.
In the past, the heads of federal parastatals and agencies were the source of huge contributions to campaign funds of the ruling party, either on their behalf or on behalf of their agencies.
With President Buhari’s recent open pronouncement not to use government funds for campaigns, the ruling party is re-strategising. A source within the campaign council, said it would rely more on text messages to convey its campaign messages.
In 2014, the APC was more successful in raising funds from the masses through voucher cards and donations from mostly supporters of the then candidate, Buhari, but all that has changed.
An APC stalwart, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, however, claimed that key players of the APC then, who defected from the PDP, diverted good resoruces to help Buhari’s campaign at that time.
The Social Democratic Party and other new political parties are more hard hit as their campaigns are hardly heard of, except occasional visits to the markets in major cities.
A former Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana, who, in the run up to the 2015 elections generated nothing less than N5 billion for the PDP, during its fundraising dinner, has emerged as the presidential candidate of the SDP but has not been able to do anything close to that now.
Fundraising dinners have been the preferred method of the PDP, which ahead of the 2015 elections, raised N21.27 billion in one night with significant donations from businessmen, public officials under the umbrella of the party and government agencies and parastatals, but the party has not been able to organise any fundraising dinner, so far.
MONITORING BY EFCC, INEC.
The chances of the parties, especially the opposition, to raise funds from donations are now threatened by the monitoring of the financial space by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission.
Sources within the major political parties, who spoke with The Point in separate interviews, said that unlike in the past elections, where huge sums of monies were realised through fundraising ceremonies, donations and other means, the anti-corruption posture of the current government, and the prevailing economic challenges, have made it extremely difficult for funds to be easily raised for campaign purposes.
In Nigeria, the 1999 Constitution (as amended) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria specified in section 225 (1-6) conditions and scrutiny of the sources of funds and expenses of political parties. Section 225 (3)(a) and (b) as well as 225 (4) forbid political parties from foreign funding of any kind. Section 226 (1-3) demands annual reports of account from political parties.
By extension, the Electoral Act (2010) stipulates the ceiling of expenses by candidates and political parties for specific elective positions. The maximum limits are pegged at: N1billion for presidential candidates, N200 million for governorship candidates, N40 million and N20 million, respectively, for Senate and House of Representatives candidates.
The ceiling for spending for the various office holders had been disregarded in the past, with parties and candidates exceeding these limits.
However, recently, INEC urged the EFCC to track the sources of funds spent by politicians and political parties in order to enforce the provisions of the Electoral Act on electioneering campaign funding.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who made the appeal while receiving the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, during a visit to the commission’s headquarters, said this must be done to ensure election results were not determined by money spent by a candidate or party.
“The Electoral Act presents limit as to the amount parties and individuals can spend for election and also the amount that friends of candidates and parties can contribute in any election. I want the EFCC to uphold that mandate in every capacity to track and to trace sources of funds and to work closely with us. Our democracy can never be on sale and by working closely with the EFCC, we can achieve that,” Yakubu said.
Speaking with The Point, the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, said any politician “who spends outside the amount allowed by the law will be prosecuted by the anti graft agencies.”
ECONOMIC WOES
The bad state of the Nigerian economy, which has been worsened by the fall in the price of crude oil at the international market, has virtually affected the financial status of individual businessmen and corporate organisations that used to covertly or overtly provide huge sums of money for favoured politicians and political parties to bankroll their electioneering campaigns.
A party chieftain confided in The Point that politicking and electioneering required a lot of money, which was why political parties invested heavily in rallies and face to face contacts with the electorate.
The cost under this heading, according to him, will include hiring large venues, public address systems, transport, and accommodation expenses, among others. Large expenses are also incurred in the print and electronic media to send out messages to the populace.
He added that, in these days of the social media, expenditures were also incurred on that front.
“Again, resources are spent on campaign offices, billboards, posters, handbills, renting offices, campaign staff and logistics to reach out to the electorate. Even after the election results have been declared by the electoral umpire, election petitions go through the gamut of the courts and are usually fought on behalf of candidates by very senior and expensive-to-hire lawyers, who earn very fat fees,” the party chieftain said.
Speaking on the issue, the Director-General of the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation, Senator Bukola Saraki, agreed that the current political environment was not what it was in 2015, saying this was because the government of the day hardly tolerated a different voice or position.
Saraki said the Buhari administration had chocked up the environment.
He said the financial institutions were being monitored by various governmental agencies and, therefore, could not release money for political activities unlike what obtained in the past.
