INEC Boss, Others Raise Alarm over Increasing Money Politics

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu says the current democracy in Nigeria is being threatened by the predominance of money politics.

Yakubu made this disclosure at a one-day colloquium on Emerging Issues that will Shape the 2023 General Elections in Nigeria organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in collaboration with Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) in Abuja on Wednesday.

Yakubu said that there were three critical challenges to be overcome in the conduct of the 2023 election which includes insecurity, fake news and money politics.

“My third area of concern is the influence of money on politics and is becoming more present and the risk is that ours may soon become a plutocracy for the rich rather than a democracy for the people.

“The way money is exchanging hands is a source of concern, yes, we have collaboration with ICPC and the EFCC and only recently we renewed our collaboration with the EFCC, saying that we are going to do something together.

“However , there are two dimensions to it, when you have willing connectors it becomes a bit more difficult to contain the situation.

“On the one hand, you have  brilliant examples, we all saw  this on the social media in Anambra when there was an attempt to bribe  voters and these women refused to accept the money and voted their conscience,” he  pointed out.

Yakubu explained that what political parties do is critical to what INEC does because that is what is called the primary election, adding that the candidates that emerged from the primary elections were the ones that would participate in the secondary election which INEC would conduct.

He hinted that the commission was working with anti-graft and finance agencies to see how to curb the challenge of money politics.

He expressed the commission’s concern about the security situation in the country as it prepare for the 2023 general election because it was a major challenge.

He stated however that the commission has been meeting with security agencies to tackle the challenges.

On his part, Prof. Attahiru Jega, former INEC chairman, lamented that the use of money in Nigerian politics was a source of concern.

Jega posited that the way money is used, many of us are now saying that we are moving in the direction of becoming a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

According to Jega “Plutocracy is basically the government of the rich for the rich by the rich.

“Imagine, the National Assembly altered the Electoral Act to increase the threshold of how much a candidate can spend for election finance.

“That is something that we should all have opposed regrettably, we were too busy with the issue of electronic transmission and so on that we lost focus.

“We did not pay sufficient attention to what they were trying to do because they now smuggled the issue of huge financial outlays required of candidates.”

Jega stated further that many political parties, particularly the so-called big ones, now put huge amounts as nomination fees, which automatically excluded women, young men and people with disability from the contest.

He opined that attention has to be focused on money politics for the next cycle of electoral reform to the electoral legal framework, adding that there is need for elections to be less costly; otherwise the marginalised groups will continue to be excluded from the process.

He applauded INEC for refusing to yield to the pressure of political parties to change the timetable for elections which was set under a process of very careful contemplation and in the context of the new electoral law.

Mr Yabagi Sani,Chairman, Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC)  said that political parties were in top gear preparing for the elections in compliance with the legal framework.

Sani pointed out that INEC did not carry the political parties along before setting the election timetable, leading to some problems.

CDD’s Director, Idayat Hassan, noted that the meeting was convened by the Centre with the view of briefing ahead of the 2023 general elections.

Hassan said parts of the country are embroiled in different forms of conflict and violence and all these threats have implications for the conduct of elections, safety of election materials, personnel and even voters.

She stated that the level of political violence witnessed in the last five months was unprecedented with at least 76 incidences of politically related violence between Jan. 1 and May 13.

Hassan disclosed that the violent incidences cuts across 24 states and the six geo-political zones of Nigeria with most number of incidences in the North Central and South East recording the most fatalities, stressing that this has the potential of affecting voter turnout and the legitimacy of the result