Tackling dirty money in Nigeria’s politics

 

On September 22 and 23, 2022, the National Assembly in collaboration with the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung held a capacity-building workshop for members of the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-corruption. The theme of the workshop was “Corruption as a threat to security in Nigeria.” In attendance were military and other security top brass and federal lawmakers. I was privileged to be one of the few resource persons.  I presented a paper titled “The Electoral Process in Nigeria in the Face of Insecurity and Corruption: Solving the Problem of Dirty Money in Politics.”

I decided to expatiate on this position again given the fact that Nigeria is at the threshold of conducting her seventh general elections in this Fourth Republic and, coincidentally, formal campaigns for national elections holding on Saturday, February 25, 2023, start today. It will last for five months.

There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria is plagued with myriads of corrupt practices be it petty or grand. Media reports and successes recorded by the anti-corruption agencies like the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Code of Conduct Bureau attest to this. Indeed, according to Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perception Index, Nigeria scored 24/100 and ranked 154/180 countries surveyed.

There is a nexus between corruption and elections. Some Very Important Personalities, who acquired ill-gotten wealth, often decide to launder such in politics. They either contest themselves or bankroll the election of stooges to whom they become godfathers. This is why many are asking questions as to how some of the frontline presidential candidates in next year’s election make their billions.

According to Transparency International, “Dirty Money” has to do with the loopholes in the global financial system that allows corruption schemes to thrive and money stolen from people to be laundered and hidden. In Nigeria’s context, it can mean two things. First is money made from fraudulent or illegitimate means such as embezzlement, oil theft, scamming (419), Ponzi schemes, trafficking in narcotics, kidnapping, arms trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism, etcetera being used to contest elections. Imagine if Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, popularly called Evans the kidnapper, who just got 21 years jail term last week or international scammer, Ramon Abbas, better known as Hushpuppi, were to contest and win elections to become president or governor in Nigeria.

Another way to conceive the notion of dirty money in politics is by using money acquired legitimately to corrupt the electoral process. This can manifest through the inducement of delegates as witnessed during the recently held party primaries where mind-blowing amount of money, including foreign currencies, was allegedly paid to delegates of the dominant political parties ahead of the presidential and governorship primaries. Other examples that can be cited include voter inducements. This happens a lot during the campaigns and on election day.

Nigerian electoral laws and regulations have provisions meant to prevent incidences of “dirty money” in politics. Section 225 (1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, says political parties shall submit to the Independent National Electoral Commission and publish a statement of its assets and liabilities. Subsection (2) says, “Every political party shall submit to INEC a detailed annual statement and analysis of its sources of funds and other assets together with a similar statement of its expenditure in such form as the Commission may require.”

Section 225 (3) says, “No political party shall – (a) hold or possess any funds or other assets outside Nigeria; or (b) be entitled to retain any funds or assets remitted or sent to it from outside Nigeria.” The penalty for flouting this section is in the succeeding S. 225 (4) of the Constitution. It states that any such funds remitted or sent to political parties from outside Nigeria shall be paid over or transferred to the Commission within 21 days of its receipt….”.”

Limitations on election expenses as stipulated in Section 88 (2 – 7) of the Electoral Act 2022 are part of the attempts to control the influence of money in Nigeria’s electoral process. However, this provision is flagrantly flouted by the political contestants. The intendment of provision of section 88 (8) of the Electoral Act which states that “No individual or other entity shall donate to a candidate more than N50,000,000” is meant to place a ceiling on individual contribution so that they do not pollute the electoral process, however, jerking up individual contribution from N1m in the Electoral Act 2010, as amended to N50m in the 2022 Act is a disservice to the country. The lawmakers however, justified this exponential increase as desirable due to the hyperinflation and low purchasing power of the country’s currency.

To ensure clean election, the Electoral Act 2022 has provisions against voter inducement, bribery and vote trading. These are contained in sections 121 and 127.  Provision of S. 90 (1) is also very instructive. It says “A political party shall not accept or keep in its possession any anonymous monetary or other contributions, gifts or property, from any source.” Subsection (3) says “A political party shall not accept any monetary or other contribution which is more than N50,000,000 unless it can identify the source of the money or other contribution to the Commission.” Sub. (4) says “A political party sponsoring the election of a candidate shall, within three months after the announcement of the results of the election, file a report of the contributions made by individuals and entities to the Commission.” While these are laudable provisions, however, they are observed in breach.

While our laws permit crowdfunding as a veritable and legitimate means of campaign finance for individuals and groups, this can be subjected to abuse by the organisers as some of them may be fake or unaccountable to the campaign organisations whose interests they claim they are serving. In 2019, the political party of a presidential candidate accused him of not accounting for monies raised from crowdfunding. Recently, the campaign organisation of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar denounced and dissociated itself from a faceless group trying to raise funds for his campaign organisation. The bigger challenge here is how to ensure that monies from dubious and unwholesome sources are not donated to candidates in order to make them victorious in the looming polls.  Anti-corruption agencies, therefore, need to monitor the fundraisers of the candidates who may decide to use crowdfunding or other means of fundraising. This is to ensure full compliance with our anti-corruption laws.

INEC is empowered by our electoral laws viz. constitution and Electoral Act to monitor campaign finance. However, the commission does not have sufficient in-house manpower and capacity to do a thorough job. This is because monitoring dirty money or illicit financial flows into Nigerian politics is a very technical exercise. INEC, therefore, needs to partner with anti-corruption agencies such as EFCC, CCB, ICPC and the police to track abuse of campaign expenses as well as voter inducements.

Solving the problem of dirty money in Nigerian politics, especially ahead of the 2023 general election needs the partnership and collaboration of anti-corruption agencies and INEC. Political parties also need to do some background checks about the source of wealth of some of the aspirants seeking the sponsorship of the party in order to contest elections. As part of their screening, they should request clearance from the anticorruption agencies that they are clean and are not seeking to launder money made through illicit means into our politics. National Assembly should tighten the nuts and bolts of our electoral laws as well as anticorruption legislations to tackle this menace of dirty money in politics. Media and CSOs can help serve as whistleblowers on those who are using our politics to launder “blood money” or “dirty money.”