•A ward meeting for senatorial candidate costs about N763,000
With less than a month to the general elections, politicians, especially federal lawmakers, are complaining of financial strains arising from huge spending on campaigns. They appear to be feeling the heat and are groaning that they are running out of funds to execute the rest of their campaign.
Only the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was able to flag-off a presidential campaign in good time. The party rolled out a nationwide campaign that was launched on February 8 in Lafia, Nassarawa State, which will terminate with a grand finale in Abuja on March 26.
A political analyst who spoke to BusinessDay on condition of anonymity said the PDP had access to state resources and was in a better position to get donors who have bought into President Goodluck Jonathan’s candidacy for obvious reasons.
According to him, “besides controlling the Federal Government, the PDP also controls about 28 states of the federation. Apart from Jonathan, who has been hopping from state to state in a presidential jet campaigning, after the zonal launchings, some close campaigners for the president have presidential jets assigned to them. In addition, the first lady, Patience Jonathan, has also been touring the country mobilising women on behalf of her husband. All of these involve enormous amounts of money.”
He said it was different for the opposition parties. “For a presidential election taking place on April 9, it was only penultimate week that the main opposition parties launched their campaigns”.
Sources close to Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and Nuhu Ribadu of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) confided in BusinessDay that cash crunch was an issue in the late start of their campaigns. Another source said even Ibrahim Shekarau, Kano State governor and presidential candidate of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), has not had it easy raising money for his campaigns.
The smaller opposition parties like the National Transformation Party (NTP) are yet to kick off their presidential campaigns less than one month to the election.
Francis Chukwunweike Maduekwe, the senatorial candidate of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) for Anambra Central Senatorial District, in an interview with BusinessDay, said no politician could come out and tell anybody exactly how much he had spent because money would have been spent right up to election day. According to him, contesting an election was a very expensive venture especially in Anambra, adding that the kind of money he had seen contestants spend in campaigns was not the type spent by people who earned their money legitimately.
According to him, Anambra Central Senatorial District has 109 wards, adding that initially he was spending an average of N200,000 daily on radio jingles alone, but due to the huge cost he had suspended radio jingles.
He said when a meeting was called in Awka the state capital, the least a contestant could give to each ward representative was N5,000, and for entertainment, the least per person was N2,000; all of which added up to N763,000. This was just for one meeting. There had been several meetings and there would be many more before election, Maduekwe said.
Sources disclosed that some National Assembly members who secured the tickets of their parties have resorted to selling off some of their properties, including vehicles and real estate, to offset their bills.
Maduekwe, a lawyer, who has not held any political office previously, lamented that the high cost of campaigning has kept many decent people out of politics; adding that electoral reforms should include orientation for the electorate so that they could be moderate in their expectation from contestants.
Kingsley Ikem Ozobia, the Labour Party candidate for Onitsha Federal Constituency in Anambra, told BusinessDay that in politics, any amount of money is expendable; whether N20 billion or N10 million. He corroborated Maduekwe’s view that politics in Anambra State is expensive, adding that whenever a candidate talks to a gathering of people, he was bound to spend.
An aide to one of the federal lawmakers told BusinessDay in confidence at the weekend that the lawmaker in question had lost weight, and last week, sold one of his cars to offset part of his campaign expenses.
The source said: “I can confirm that many of the federal lawmakers are not finding it easy meeting up with their campaign expenses. You could see that many of them have not been attending plenary sessions; it has been tough”.
A gubernatorial candidate from one of the South West states was sighted in Abuja and when asked why he was not at his base, he responded: “I have come to see some of my friends for assistance. Time is not on my side and I need money to meet up with my campaign”.
He said there were many people to be reached and he could not say for sure that he had satisfied everybody. “You have to keep oiling your campaign machinery till the last day of campaigning”.
When asked how much he had spent, the candidate simply said: “My brother, leave that; if you are talking of how much you have spent, you will not do anything. I am still in the race and that is the most important thing”.
Most of the federal lawmakers who secured the tickets of their respective parties have stayed away from plenary sessions for weeks in order to concentrate on their campaigns, resulting in neither chamber able to form a quorum.
Another politician, who pleaded anonymity, told BusinessDay that in an election period, a candidate picks up the bill of the party and campaign leaders, such as their children’s school fees, hospital bills, sponsoring wedding ceremonies, burial ceremonies and so on. These, he said, are not counted as expenditure as such gestures are seen as small and part of the obligations of any person seeking elective office.
For the real campaign, the cost elements include logistics, transportation, motorcycles, hotel accommodation, goodwill gesture - normally extended to police and other security agents, traditional rulers, town union executives and opinion leaders in communities.
