Reducing the influence of money in political primaries

The monetisation of politics especially at the level of selecting standard-bearers for political parties has dominated the headlines of major news outlets in the last couple of days. It has become an open secret that aspirants in the two leading political parties—the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party—have been notorious in the deployment of money to buy votes that will transform them to candidates. The sad aspect of it is that everyone knows that this practice is illegal and immoral and has no redeeming feature. But it persists. This discourse reviews the extant practice and charts a way for democratising political party primaries.

The Electoral Act provides for three methods, which political parties can use to choose candidates vis direct primaries involving all members of the party in the appropriate constituency. The second is indirect primaries involving delegates while the third is the consensus option involving the agreement of the contenders to pick one aspirant and transform him to a candidate. The consensus option has been very widely abused as seen in the convention of the APC a couple of weeks ago. It led to imposition and aspirants who purportedly had voluntarily withdrawn from the race were seen crying and protesting at the podium on how they were forced to step down. The delegate option which is very widely practised is the foundation for the current monetisation crisis. In the current dispensation, a few members of a party are involved in the determination of the fate of the aspirants.

Delegates are supposed to emerge from a direct election by party members. But the strange situation is that the elections to choose the delegates never held in so many constituencies. Available reports indicate that godfathers, “owners of Nigeria” and persons who arrogate to themselves the privilege of playing God simply dictate the persons to act as delegates in utter contempt of the popular will of party members. Impunity throws up illegality and a bunch of supposed democrats without democratic credentials who do not believe in anything but filthy lucre.

The monetisation of political party primaries is not limited to the presidential primaries but runs across all cadres of positions. It runs from the State House of Assembly to the House of Representatives and the Senate, to the gubernatorial primaries, etc. The only difference is the quantum of resources being deployed and the number of delegates or electors being bribed with the money. The resources required to capture a candidacy increase based on the relevance of the position being sought and the resources that will be controlled by the office in the event the candidate becomes successful at the general election.

The message being sent is that the aspirants are buying the office, some sort of investment into public office. Like a typical investor in a legal and legitimate business, this is an investment in power. Thus, once the investor succeeds in capturing the office, he is entitled to recoup his costs as well as make a profit on his investment. The business investor has restraints on the profit he can make. Considering that he may not be the only person offering the goods or services, he cannot afford to price his services out of the market because he has competitors. Therefore, market forces compel the business investor to be on the path of reason. However, unlike the business investor, the political investor has no restraints on the quantum of profits he can make. The only restraint is the conscience which would have long been dead before he assumes office. The law would be unable to hold such elected officials to account because they started by compromising the system and would continue the compromise once in office.

Considering the poor value of the naira compared to major international currencies, the aspirants are no longer content with distributing the naira. They now deal in and distribute major international currencies, especially the dollar. In the last couple of weeks, in the run-up to the presidential primaries of the PDP and APC, the dollar to naira exchange rate moved from the N580 to US$1 benchmark to today’s rate of over N610 to US$1. The implication is that political party primaries put undue pressure on the value of the naira by increasing the demand for foreign exchange. But this is a misallocation of resources because it is not about using foreign currencies to procure machinery, spares, raw materials or capital goods needed in production and service delivery. It is not about using foreign currencies to bolster jobs, exports or reduce imports. It is just about using scarce capital and foreign currencies for consumption, frivolities and waste, and for a venture that instead of adding value to the economy subtracts from available capacities and competencies.

This illegality is no longer hidden; the exchanges take place in broad daylight and can be unveiled by security agencies if they so wish. The unfortunate aspect of this development is that everyone knows vote-buying is going on, in violation of the law and its due process, but everyone looks the other way, pretends it is normal and only complaints are heard from time to time. Yes, delegates may need support for flights, accommodation and logistics of attending conventions for selecting candidates in far-flung capital cities. But this can be borne and arranged by political parties rather than leaving the aspirants to convert the process to a bazaar.

This challenge is not beyond common sense and the ingenuity of Nigerians. The first point of departure is that political parties need to consider deepening democracy by holding direct primaries for the emergence of candidates. However, this can also be sabotaged just like the general elections. A clean and electronic membership register accessible to all members may be the foundation for this contest. This requires credible party machinery, officials and leaders who do not see primaries as a source of monetary windfall. Even if the delegate system is to be used, a credible electoral process that ensures that the vote counts in the emergence of delegates will be a good foundation.

Security, anti-corruption and monetary policy agencies need to get involved in monitoring the movement of huge quantities of electronic money, cash and other resources for political purposes and bring the perpetrators to justice for money laundering, bribery, vote-buying and similar offences created in our statute books. If these law enforcement agencies were not prepared for the primaries which will be concluded in the next couple of days, they have been given adequate notice to prepare them for action during the long period of campaigns by candidates.

We cannot continue like this. Once power is bought, democracy is compromised.