Last week, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) announced the cost of expression of interest and nomination forms for various elective positions ahead of the 2023 elections, stirring reactions in various quarters. In particular, the whopping sum of N100 million for forms for presidential aspirants was deemed outrageous by several observers. In the main opposition People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP), its presidential ticket was also set very high \u2013 N40 million. This development reignited conversations on the continuous rise in the already high cost of elections in Nigeria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Election expenses have been a fundamental issue in elections, particularly with regard to how it excludes certain groups of persons such as women, young people and persons with disabilities from aspiring and contesting for elective positions. Ahead of political party primaries for the 2023 general elections, some aspirants, particularly those vying to be presidential candidates of their respective parties have claimed that their supporters will be making contributions for the purchase of their parties\u2019 forms. This has drawn attention to the limits to contribution of election expenses as provided by the Electoral Act 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section 88(8) of the Electoral Act provides that no individual or other\nentity shall donate more than N50 million to a candidate<\/strong>, while section 90(3) prohibits\na political party <\/strong>from accepting monetary or other contribution which is\nmore than N50 million unless it can identify the source of the money to the Independent\nNational Electoral Commission (INEC). It is also key to point out that the\nprovisions of the Electoral Act on contributions are in respect of candidates\nand political parties and not aspirants. Therefore, persons who are vying for\nthe candidature of their political parties and receiving contributions for that\npurpose are not caught by these provisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For contributions to political parties, section 90 of\nthe Electoral Act provides for how political parties are to deal with\ncontributions from individuals and entities but does not specifically state\nwhether such contributions are for the purpose of funding election expenses or\nfor general fundraising purposes by parties. This includes a requirement for a\nparty sponsoring a candidate to file a report of contributions it has received\nwith INEC, within three months after the announcement of election results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, section 89 of the Electoral Act makes provision for election expenses by political parties. This includes that such expenses shall be determined by INEC in consultation with the parties (sub-section 2) and a requirement for parties to submit their election expenses to INEC in an audited return within six months after the election (sub-section 3). Section 89(1) defines election expenses as expenses incurred by a party from the date INEC issues notice for an election up to and including the day of the election. The provisions of sections 89 and 90 provide laid down procedures on how political parties are expected to deal with contributions and election expenses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Interestingly, in addition to the stipulated limits on\ncontributions to candidates and political parties, section 87 of the Electoral\nAct provides that INEC shall determine donation limits to political\nparties<\/strong> and candidates<\/strong>, adding that the Commission can also demand\ninformation on the amount and source of such donation. The word \u2018candidates\u2019\nwas introduced into this provision in the re-enacted Electoral Act. Formerly,\nit only applied to political parties. It may be deduced that the power vested\non INEC by this provision is to exert general control on contributions to\ncandidates during elections and contributions to political parties during\nelections and perhaps at all material time \u2013 both during elections and for\ngeneral fundraising purposes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the frenzy of elections and canvassing support for aspirants\nand candidates, it is also important to note that companies are prohibited from\nmaking donations or gifting property or funds to a political party or political\nassociation or for a political purpose according to section 43 of the Companies\nand Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The outrageous cost of elections has been a challenge and even more challenging are efforts to effectively monitor candidates\u2019 election expenses, making it almost impossible to identify and prosecute offenders. The Electoral Act sets a limit for election expenses that may be incurred by candidates vying for the various elective offices. Section 88 which lists these limits, sets the maximum expenses for a presidential candidate at N5billion. Again, election expenses as defined in section 89(1) refer to expenses incurred from the time INEC issues notice for an election. Therefore, it may be inferred that expenses incurred by an aspirant before becoming a candidate are excluded from the calculation of election expenses referred to in the provision of section 88. Nigerians continue to decry the high cost of elections but in the absence of a mechanism to checkmate this issue and bring offenders to book, the high cost of elections may linger for the foreseeable future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) announced the cost of expression of interest and nomination forms for various elective positions ahead of the 2023 elections, stirring reactions in various quarters. In particular, the whopping sum of N100 million for forms for presidential aspirants was deemed outrageous by several observers. In the main opposition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}