By Ganiyu Rabo
The expensive nature of the 2015 general elections, no doubt, puts Nigeria ahead of African states as the most vibrant political entity on the continent where huge sums of money are frittered by party candidates on the tormentors’ pathway to power.
With a whooping average expenditure of up to N125 billion by INEC for the 2015 elections, it’s not surprising that Nigeria’s general elections wear the coveted crown as the biggest election in Africa; thanks to the large voters’ register.
It is inarguable that the 2015 general elections consumed billions of naira going by the scale of advertorials and the strength of mobilisation by the two major political parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Some election observers even alleged that one of the political parties spent almost equivalent of Nigeria’s 2014 national budget of over N4 trillion. That remains to be argued as there are no clear up-to-date statistics on how much was actually expended by parties in the elections.
Suffice to say, the Electoral Act 2010 limits the money a political party candidate spends or receives in an election. Section 91 (2-7) of the Act states: ‘The maximum election expenses to be incurred by a candidate at a presidential election shall be N1, 000, 000, 000.’
It will be foolhardy to say that all the political parties in the 2015 general elections observed this provision.
In 2011, former President Goodluck Jonathan had a lot of goodwill, hence got much support financially from Nigerians in the campaigns leading to the general elections. But in 2015, the goodwill had dwindled and hampered funds available for his candidacy.
In the past, party members, contractors and indeed other business people had a windfall of funds to play around with. But in the last elections, the same category of Nigerians who were available for a grab of the PDP’s campaign funds as in 2011 were not fortunate as the financial fortunes nosedived, leaving a gap between expectations and reality which led to some of the finance managers being wrongly accused of prevention to campaign funds.
In the case of PDP and APC, there have been outcries on how the financial directors handled the disbursement of campaign funds.
Such outcry is loudest in the camp of the new opposition party, the PDP which lost the 2015 general elections to the APC. Its campaign director of finance, Senator Nenadi Usman, has come under several personal attacks in the media lately by some aggrieved PDP members and contractors who unfortunately could not get a share of the very scarce resources during the campaigns.
The choice of Senator Usman to chair the finance committee of the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign Organisation didn’t come as a surprise to many who have kept a tab on her track record in public service. The former Commissioner for Environment, Natural Resources and Health in Kaduna state and former Minister of State Finance and later Minister of Finance has an enviable track record of diligent public service.
Senator Usman is no stranger to the intrigues of politics and campaign funds administration in Nigeria having meritoriously served as one of the campaign coordinators to former Kaduna state Governor, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi in 1999 and re-appointed for the same position in 2003. She was also one of the coordinators, Olusegun Obasanjo Campaign Committee.
Today, the Kaduna state-born senator in the 7th Assembly is being petted with acrimonious writings in the media of having mismanaged the Jonathan/Sambo 2015 campaign funds whereas, Senator Usman actually worked assiduously to save the face of the campaign organisation from financial embarrassment in the face of dwindling cash availability.
It is important to note, however, that the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign Organisation (PCO) deemed it fit to put the responsibility of handling the payment of major and quasi business transactions in the hands of the Committee of Finance throughout the campaigns because of the trust in Senator Usman. The committee was not given the mandate to distribute funds for self-seeking members of the party.
A group in a recent letter to the Acting National Chairman of the PDP demanded from Senator Usman details of billions of naira allegedly budgeted and released for registered PDP groups to mobilise people during the campaigns.
It further requested details on Security Department and how money was disbursed to all security agents attached to the PCO. Also demanded are details on how 25 vendors who have purportedly supplied goods and services during and after the campaigns were yet to be paid and details on how some departments and directorates were paid and others were not paid.
For instance, a company which is alleging non-payment by Senator Usman offered to undertake ‘President’s Voice SMS Campaign Broadcast To Eligible Voters’ to 60 million Nigerian voters at N7 per number broadcast. After 25% discount of N1.75k, the PCO was expected to pay N100 million of the total seed fund sum of N315 million while the remaining balance of N215 million was to be raised from private sources.
To be fair to the members of the PDP and Nigerians in general, the actual cost of SMS in Nigeria to any network remains N4 and sending SMS in bulk to 60 million Nigerians should ordinarily attract good discount. The counterpart funding were never raised by the said company after collecting N20 million from the PCO and only 3 about million Lagos and Abuja lines actually received the President’s voice SMS broadcast according to the company’s sources.
Clearly, contractors and ambitious individuals saw political campaigns as opportunities for easy money-making. In many cases, when they fail in their bid to extort money, they resort to using the judiciary and sometimes lawyers as platforms to achieve an otherwise impossible financial goal.
Rabo wrote from Lagos
