By Victor Emejuiwe
For any political party to achieve successful prosecution of campaigns across the country, huge financial resources must be deployed. The two major political parties, the PDP and the APC both released their campaign schedule across the states of the federation.
From the schedule, the APC plans to visit the 37 states of the federation and the same goes for the PDP. No doubt, this form of wide coverage across states is not only cost implicating, but it is also so as to make the electorates have a feel of what each candidate and their party is offering.
It is important to note that movement from one state to another attracts specific cost such as transportation of both road and air. The number of party officials that accompany the campaign team also has to be conveyed in their large numbers. In each of the campaign grounds, convoys of government official cars can be sighted and these vehicles must have been fueled to the location. Private Jets are also being chattered to campaign venues at a very huge cost. Most delegates are also lodged in hotels in some of the states.
From the previous campaign monitoring exercise conducted by the Center for Social Justice in the states, we discovered that it takes N5m to hire a private jet. Hundreds of buses were hired at N20, 000 per bus to convey participants down to the campaign venue. There are other logistics involved in the staging of campaigns and that include; payment for venue, platforms, musical instruments, performances by artist, Generating sets, decorations, Costumes, Cooling van and distribution of drinks and food Items to participants. Etc. No doubt with the large crowd of participants seen in the campaign grounds of both the APC and the PDP, millions of naira must have been spent for mobilization.
In so many campaign grounds, the distribution of branded rice, salt and the issuance of other forms of souvenirs can be witnessed. The extrapolation of these expenditure items indicates the quantum of money being spent in each of the state. However, one cannot wish away the fact that most of these expenses are hugely incurred by the ruling People’s Democratic Party. Notwithstanding the All Progressive Congress can never be totally left out of some of these specific cost items.
The quest for change requires transparency and accountability; therefore it would be necessary for the political parties to tell Nigerians where their campaign funds are coming from. Nigerians have commended the All Progressive Congress presidential candidate, who started in a very good slate, by occasionally coming to air to disclose how much crowd funding donation it has received.
We also understand that he remains the sole signatory to the account, in order words, he is well positioned to give details of how much has been realized and how much has been drawn out for the sake of campaigns.
The last report we heard about the account, showed that over N117m has been donated to the account; As at today the Party has visited over 20 states on account of campaigns, it would be interesting to know if the donations were strictly used for campaigns. If no further explanation is given about the status of the donations, one may feel free to think that all the money donated have just been kept hibernating in the account.
There have been allegations of some Arab donors planning to fund the campaign of the APC presidential candidate, which was quickly denied by the party. There have also been plans by the Northern Yam Farmers to donate 5million Tubers of yam at an auction rate of N1000 per tuber; but we are yet to see any of such exercise been carried out. This now leaves us with a puzzle to solve, which is; what has been the source of the APC campaign funding?
For the ruling People’s Democratic party, they disclosed the total amount of money realized from their donations and claimed that part of it would be used to construct its secretariat and also fund the campaigns of other candidate. Such statement is not enough to reassure the public of what the use of the donation.
The party should take a step further, to account to the public how much it has since used in the prosecution of its campaigns and also state those who have benefited from it. This reporting obligation is also supported by INEC through its guidelines to political parties. The Commission placed a reporting obligation on political parties in S.
12 of the guidelines; it requires all candidates to disclose to the Commission records of all contributions and other sources of funds for their campaigns, as well as records of expenditure in a prescribed format issued by the Commission.
Beyond the political parties reporting obligation to INEC, The political parties should also see it as their responsibility to report to the electorates.
It is necessary for Nigerians to utilize this campaign period, to put the political party’s commitment on transparency to test because it is at this point, that we can determine how transparent the candidates would be when they emerge into public office.
We should also note that, if the parties cannot account for smaller donations while they are yet to get into public office, it would be difficult for them to account for the Nations resources in their care. Therefore let the Political Parties do the needful by publishing full details of its campaign expenditure as required by law.
Emejuiwe is Program Officer, Good Governance, Center for Social Justice, Abuja.