Nigeria and the politics of squandermania

ALTHOUGH political campaigns have come to an end, the report the other day that media advertisements by all the political parties in the just concluded elections alone might have gulped N4.9 billion of party finances, is a scandalous development that should warrant campaign finance reforms.

This proposal has become imperative when one considers the level of impropriety, unethical professional practices, fiscal indiscipline and blatant absence of accountability and probity in the collection, disbursement and management of campaign funds.

Moreover, given the parlous state of the nation’s economy, the indiscriminate and obscene extravagance displayed by politicians, calls for a probe into the source of funds so wantonly expended.

Reports analyzing the data gathered from advertising agencies and regulatory bodies suggested that the print media raked in about N1.382 billion of the total amount.

Of this amount, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was said to have spent N332. 503 million on its presidential candidate, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was alleged to have expended N1.049 billion.

Campaign rallies of the two parties were said to have gulped N1.057 billion for PDP and N595.082 million for the APC, while outdoor campaigns for both parties took N224.36 million.

Amount spent for the coverage of broadcast campaign for the presidential candidates were N508. 35 million for PDP and N391.05 million for APC, while electronic media adverts allegedly gulped N733.9 million for PDP and N555.6 million for APC.

This brings the supposed total of the amount spent on political advert to N4.973 billion, with PDP accounting for N3.549 billion and APC N1.424 billion.

By all means, this sum is a conservative figure of campaign expenses, for it excludes the amount spent on political adverts that did not pass through regulatory bodies. It also does not include syndicated articles and news stories, extra-media image-laundering activities and other payments that lubricate campaign activities.

Moreover, when the money spent on ‘bread and butter’ gratification of the masses is considered, the amount spent on the last political campaigns would far exceed the stated figures.

This development, by any standard, is an obscene use of money and a flagrant abuse of the electoral process. It offends the moral sensibilities of well-meaning Nigerians, and is capable of causing disaffection between the rich and the poor.

More worrisome are the willful and flagrant violation of the Electoral Act and the non-prosecution of defaulters by the electoral commission. In fact, Sections 87 – 91 as amended contain provisions that require parties to open their books to the electoral body from time to time and also regulate the amount of money political parties should spend.

However, cognizant of the absence of diligent monitoring of political financing, politicians have devised strategies to circumvent the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), by using looted funds to sponsor and finance phantom non-governmental organizations and civil rights bodies, which act as fronts to mobilize voters on behalf of their sponsors.

In the same vein, businessmen, expectant of quick and sumptuous returns, have colluded with politicians to turn the electoral process into an investment. It is suspected that some financiers have even doled out hundreds of millions of naira in support of their political cause.

The question is, in an economy that is in need of revitalization, from where did such business persons get the money and what price would the tax-payers eventually pay in return?

Furthermore, the excessive use of money, especially to garner support, portrays the electorate either in its collective sense or in the capacity of individual members as instruments and means to be used and dispensed with. The electorate become cannon fodders for the politicians to shoot themselves to power, albeit, dubiously.

Again, by the avalanche of lies and untruths unleashed to convince the masses, politicians present a non-existent state of affairs; and by willfully peddling falsehood, politicians deceive and disrespect the public and do harm to their status as human beings.

Besides, money politics promotes a value disorientation that undermines genuine development and growth. As experience has shown, politicians who rode on the crest of excessive campaign spending to elective positions are likely to recoup or pay back money spent on campaigns before settling down to the business of governance; at the end of which governance is put in abeyance.

Furthermore, the integrity deficit that is associated with this scandalous political spending, with its consequent value misplacement, has come to reinforce the perception that politics is the profession of the treacherous, a solace for the deceitful and a haven of the incompetent.

Implicated in all this are political action committees of parties that have made money the god of politics, and upturn the moral table.

To wriggle out of the moral quagmire in which the polity has found itself in campaign financing, there is need to curtail the activities of these committees.

Nigeria cannot afford to have all shades of suspicious groups fronting as financiers of political parties. Every political action committee must be made to account for any donation given to its party.

To successfully track funds, their sources and deployment for acts noble or otherwise, there is need for expeditious action to be taken on the promulgation of the long-awaited Financial Intelligence Unit Act.

Apart from the stipulations of the Electoral Act, INEC must put a ceiling on what an aspirant for any electoral position should spend as campaign funds.

To give credibility to political financing and create a sense of probity and inclusion amongst party members, the faithful should be made to contribute to the financial well-being of their parties through periodic payment of dues. Parties should seek obligatory financial membership and inculcate the value of internal democracy in their management of funds.

What obtains now is a scandal that does not augur well for democracy.