Money Talks: It’s Not a Poor Man’s Game -By Seun Elere

Many have written about monetization of politics in Nigeria. I was particularly thrilled by the April 12, 2022 article on the subject by Tunji Light Ariyomo on the Premium Times. In the heat of the moment, I thought I should remind us once again about this very important problem that we really need to focus on.

It’s hard to believe that politicians in Nigeria run for office to serve. No one pays N100m, N50m, N40m or even N10m; billions of naira during party primary; and millions/billions in election related lawsuits because s/he wants to serve. It just doesn’t add up.

To run for governorship election in America, you probably need an average of N980k as party nomination fee and you can bypass this with a petition signed by about 5000 electorates in your constituent or just 500 in the case of Congress. For equivalent of our house of assembly, it cost about N100k. Guess what, America’s average minimum wage is over N700k/month while Nigeria’s is N30k/month.

In 2022, to run for state house of assembly in Nigeria, you must cough out N2m or N1.5 if you are running under APC or PDP respectively. This means that as an average minimum wage earner in Nigeria, you will need to starve yourself for about 6 years or over 4 years to afford nomination forms under APC or PDP respectively. This without adding the cost of actual participation at the primary, the election (if you win the primary) and the post election lawsuits.

During the primaries leading up to the 2023 elections, there were reports of party aspirants fighting tooth and nails to buy over the delegates. The aspirant with the biggest envelope simply gets the vote of the delegates – the highest bidders always win.

Do we really have political parties in Nigeria? Seemingly, what we have are a bunch of limited liability companies that make money off our democracy. Yes, their responsibility to the electorates is limited to the amount they earn during the elections. Nobody cares about good governance, not roads, not healthcare, not better wages, nothing.

No candidate would cough out such an amount of money just because they want to make life better for Nigerians. They would most certainly recover their investment first before they think of anything else. This is why our democracy has turned to chop-make-i-chop. It’s all about investment and return on investment, nothing more, nothing less.

Just keep shouting for that your candidate, unless you are in his or her inner caucus, you are not going to get anything out of him or her. No good governance, no infrastructure, no sincere policy. People don’t pay billions of naira to win an election because they care about the populace. This huge financial cost also scares off the good ones, the youths and women as well are pushed out of the political space unless you have a father or husband with very deep and fat pockets. We will keep electing the money bags for as long as this menace remains. ‘Good governance’ in Nigeria ends with the political parties and delegates. Those are the two beneficiaries of democracy in Nigeria.

The cry for credibility in our elections and the attack on the judiciary are misplaced priorities. Don’t blame it on INEC, it is simply tackling the leaves and branches of a tree. A faulty process will always birth a faulty outcome. Of more importance is the process that produce the candidates. This process continue to tremendously kill the desire to serve and screen out or scare off the good leaders. It is also strange how we wait till the election day to combat vote buying when the real vote buying starts during party nominations. The political parties (or corporations) are the root cause of our political problems and largely or solely responsible for the retrogression this country has experienced.

There is need for drastic reforms of our political parties. Party nomination needs to be people driven, free, fair and open. The primaries also need to be very transparent and void of any form of financial inducement of the delegates. We need to completely eradicate politics of sacks and bags and onboard ideology. Only this will bring true democracy and good governance to Nigeria.