The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed that about N1trillion was expended by political parties and candidates during the 2015 general elections.
The disclosure was made by the Chief Technical Adviser to the INEC Chairman, Prof. Bolade Eyinla during the opening of a two-day learning conference organised by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) alone was said to have expended N8.74billion in traceable publicity and other related expenses while other opposition political parties spent N2.91billion for the same purpose.
According to Prof Eyinla, the “core cost” of the election as denoted by expenditure by the commission and related institutions was $547million, while total cost, including expenses by political parties and their candidates, was between $1.5billion and $2billion.
He said, “In the last general elections in Benin Republic, the core cost was $15million, and then you had a candidate who, alone, spent about $32million.
“In Nigeria, our core cost was $547 million. It is perhaps the most expensive elections that we have ever seen. I have seen figures somewhere of between $1.5 billion to $2 billion and believe me; it is true if we knew what happened. In one scandal, we heard of $115 million.”
He further revealed that 75 political associations have at present applied to INEC for registration as political parties. He said existing laws do not give INEC the opportunity to limit the political space to just few political parties.
An INEC National Commissioner, Prof. Anthonia Simbine, in her remarks at the event stated that the level of money in politics “is responsible for the kinds of governance we have at any given time. If you make an investment, you would want to reap from that.”
She told political parties angling for public support to understand that there is no existing legislation to back that.
Speaking on party financing Simbine said, “We have existing limits in the legal framework, but this has become somehow very unrealistic because there are no enforcement frameworks or capacity when people do what they are not supposed to do. This is more because our society is cash-based and so the capacity of INEC is still very weak in tracking and monitoring party financing.
“A review we did in 2015 showed that there is largely no record-keeping, including keeping receipts of financial support by political parties.”
A peep into 2011 elections showed that all the opposition parties put together spent N2.04billion in traceable expenditure, while the then ruling PDP spent N5.01billion.
Comparatively, the N8.74billion PDP alone spent in 2015 was higher than the total money all the party spent in 2011.
