As campaigns for the 2023 general elections begin slowly, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it would monitor commercial banks, politicians and political parties in a bid to track the sources of campaign funds.
INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this at a conference on political campaign finance organised by The Electoral Forum in Abuja yesterday.
Represented by Prof. Ajayi Kunle, INEC’s national commissioner in charge of the party monitoring committee, Yakubu said the commission would set up teams to monitor election spending ahead of the polls.
He also said INEC would track movement of funds on election days to tackle vote-buying at polling units.
He further said with the assistance of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), commercial banks would be mandated to report all suspicious transactions ahead of the election.
Yakubu threatened to prosecute any bank that failed to cooperate.
On the legal implications of the move, Yakubu said the Electoral Act and the constitution empower INEC to make any other regulations that will assist its efficiency.
“As long as we have not notified anybody that the race to the 2023 general election has started, we are not unaware of what anybody is doing. We follow the law strictly.
“We have not officially declared a notice for the 2023 general elections, but when we so declare, we will put our monitoring committees to motion like the Central Bank, Department of State Services (DSS), EFCC, Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the (commercial) banks and other law enforcement agencies. We have that plan already.
“Every candidate must be made to declare his bank asset. That is where they draw out their money, so we will make them present their statement of account right from the onset. We will make it mandatory for them to turn in their bank statement so that if they say they are doing billboard and the account remains the same, then there is a problem,” he said.
On the issue of vote-buying, Yakubu said: “We are going to establish finance monitoring teams and they will be among the electorate but they (politicians and political parties) won’t know.
We are going to do it in a way that the influence of money will be reduced because we want to make the electoral field a level playing ground for both rich and poor candidates and the electorate.
Everybody will go on an equal economic level so that you won’t influence the voting pattern,” he said.
Also speaking, former INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, identified lack of accountability and transparency in political campaign financing as key factors responsible for some challenges facing Nigeria’s electoral system.
“If we insist on accountability, then you can begin to somehow sanitise the way political parties raise funds. I think what has happened is that we paid too much attention to the issue of electronic transmission of results, and somehow they quickly passed the sections about raising the threshold. The civil societies did not pay much attention in their advocacy against this particular issue.
“Nevertheless, I wouldn’t advise or recommend that we delay the passage of the Bill on account of this particular issue. What we should be exploring are ways and means of ensuring that there is accountability about how these funds are raised and the spending ceiling is met as well as how the expenditure is done,” he said.
In his remarks, the national chairman, Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Mr. Yabagi Sani, called for strict enforcement of the regulations on election funding so as to prevent monetisation of the electoral process and improve the level of trust between the electorate and political party candidates.
He said failure to do so could debase the voting process to the level of what he described as “a commodity for the highest bidder”.
Sani, who was represented by IPAC’s national treasurer, Mr. Obidike Okolo, noted that the triple menace of transnational drug trafficking, money-laundering and terrorism have led to corruption as well as the destruction of democratic philosophy.
He said in the event that the controversial Electoral Amendment Bill is eventually assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari, it would usher in the upgrading of what a presidential candidate can spend at elections from N1 billion to N5 billion, representing a 400 per cent increment amongst others.
“A governorship candidate will now have the leverage of spending up to N1 billion from the previous N200 million; a senatorial candidate, N100 million as against N40 million and a candidate for the House of Representatives, will henceforth be legally allowed to spend N70 million instead of N30 million in their election spending.
“However, political actors and commentators have been complaining that the new ceilings imply the monetisation of the election process beyond the low-income groups in spite of their other qualifications. In this context, it is feared that women, youths and people living with disabilities will be the most excluded from the political process and governance.”
In his remark, chairman of forum, Prof. Bayo Olukoshi, called for the amendment of the Electoral Act to strengthen the monitoring mechanism.
