Election campaigns are one of the major institutions of democracy. It emerged to perform an essential function in the democratic process. Such function is to explain the programmes and manifestos of political parties to the electorate and solicit their vote during elections. Democracy is government based on the consent of the people derived from competitive elections. Political parties are the institutions which contest elections. Each of them is expected to present to the people the reasons they want to contest the election and election campaign is the only procedure through which a political party explains its programmes to the electorate. Campaigns are therefore used by individuals and political parties to convince voters to support them.
The Constitution of Nigeria (1999) made provisions for many elections. They include elections into the following political institutions: National and states legislative Assemblies and the offices of the President, Governors of states, Chairmen and Councillors of Local Government Councils. Other forms of elections are also conducted for election into the executive committees of political parties and primaries to elect candidates to represent each party in major elections.
The Electoral Act makes provision for guidelines on how to organize campaigns. It contains the time when campaigns are to start and end. The challenge of this provision is that the commencement date for campaigns is often flaunted. For example, campaigns have already started when the Independent National Electoral Commission has not blown the whistle for the commencement of campaigns for the 2015 general election.
The reasons for this “illegal” campaign are not farfetched. The wind of decamping blowing through the political system has created panic for the major political parties, especially the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The crisis in PDP led to the decamping of some of its members including governors. The party reacted by sacking those who defected. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, chairman of the party, was sacrificed to appease the hawks in the party. This notwithstanding, the spade of decamping continued. Both APC and PDP engaged the services of the judiciary to legitimize decamping or declaring it null and void.
The last card of the parties is “informal” campaigns by leaders of political parties to generate support and make members of other parties decamp to their parties. Examples of such illegal campaigns include the rallies in Ilorin by the PDP and the summit of the APC in Transcorp Hilton, Abuja. These two gatherings are political campaign rallies, although their organizers decided to hide under fake names. This is to avoid the hammer of INEC which could sanction the parties concerned.
The requirement for organizing political campaign rallies is that it must be within the dateline of INEC. What happened was a gross violation of the relevant law.The false start in the campaigns should not be extended to other requirements. One of such is campaign messages which contain the idea which the party intends to share with voters. Such messages should be concise, brief, and address the burning challenges of the state. It can contain the weaknesses in the programme of the ruling party; it should however not contain negative attacks on the personality of other political parties or espouse extremist ideologies.
Barry Goldwater lost a presidential election in the USA because of his extremist racial ideology. In Nigeria, Alhaji Ibrahim Waziri’s Great Nigerian Peoples Party, won elections in many states with his philosophy of Politics Without Bitterness. Similarly, Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Unity Party used the policy of Four Cardinal Programmes – free education, free health, gainful employment and rural integration – to win elections in many states.
Last week the Alliance for Progressive Change in its summit unveiled ten issues which are yet to be defined as manifesto commitment. Meanwhile, PDP is busy preventing its members from decamping to APC without promoting any clear message.
Negative messages should be avoided. In this regard, political parties should learn from messages of politicians during the 1999 elections. In the primary election of the PDP, Dr. Alex Ekwueme issued a message which contained 7 points entitled: The Price for a Better Tomorrow. The Olu Falae campaign organization itemized what it described as Ten Goliaths of the Nigerian State.
Obasanjo’s campaign organization in its message THE CHOICE IS CLEAR listed the achievements of Obasanjo which made him the best candidate.
Another major challenge for political campaign is advertisement which is the use of paid media to influence voters. The Election Management Body is expected to provide guidelines to ensure a level playing field for political parties.
This is usually a difficult task. Media organizations owned by the government are always at the service of the ruling party, and some of them go to the extent of refusing advertisements by opposition parties. INEC should endeavour to sanitize this process if the concept of a level playing ground is to be realized.
Instead of performing its political education function, election campaigns are occasions potential voters expect to get their share of the national cake. Consequently, corruption has been institutionalized in the electoral process. It is unfortunate that election outcomes are determined by cash and carry rather than the message of the campaign. The ball is now in the court of INEC which should do something as delay is dangerous.
