Sources of political parties’ campaign expenditure in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Examining the 2015 General Election

Abstract

A periodic election is a fundamental pillar and backbone of any democratic regime, and for a proper election to take place there must be some activities, most especially by parties and contestants to vote for them most especially competing to secure the electorates. These activities require huge expenditure from the parties and their financiers through campaigns, media advertisements and other related activities. The problem is that parties and their candidates are allowed, in Nigeria constitutionally and by the Electoral Act 2010, to source their campaign finance privately, which has led to illegal financing. The objective of this paper is to examine the sources of parties’ campaign expenditure in the Fourth Republic, taking the 2015 General Election as the case study. The research used a qualitative method of data collection and analysis where both primary and secondary sources were used. The primary source was an in-depth personal interview with some selected informants/participants from the categories of stakeholders in the electoral process, parties, and agencies responsible for regulating their activities. The secondary source was the use of available documents such as books, journals and Internet sources on the subject matter of the study. The data obtained were analysed and interpreted using thematic analytical interpretations from the informants’ views and the existing data in the field. The research discovered that there are basically six major sources of campaign expenditure for parties and that some of the sources are illegal and the spending has violated the regulations. The research recommends thorough supervision and monitoring of the sources of parties’ campaign expenditure and the spending process.

Keywords

Political parties campaign financing election Fourth Republic

Introduction

Political party expenditure is one of the major issues of concern by citizens today across the globe, owing to the increasing number of illicit activities that are taking place in the process (Biezen, 2003; Nkechi and Innocent, 2014). Nigeria is one of the developing democracies which has a long way to go in making effective the operation and principles of democratic rule. Nigeria re-emerged as a democratic state in what is called the Fourth Republic (1999–present). Since the emergence of the Fourth Republic and democratisation, the periodic election has been taking place after every four years as provided by the Constitution. From 1999 to the present, five General Elections took place in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015, with the sixth one approaching in 2019. One of the issues that were not given much attention by academia is the issue of campaign expenditure and sources of political party financing in the process of election.

There are various sources from which political parties and contestants obtained the means of financing their campaign and electioneering expenditure, as identified by many studies (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), 2014; Ohman, 2014; United States Agency for International Development and United Kingdom Agency for International Development (USAID and UKAID), 2015). There are two basic laws which regulate the sources, means and process of campaign expenditure including maximum contribution limit, maximum spending limit by all elective offices, disclosure, parties’ financial auditing, legal sources and punishment in addition to sanctions. These laws are the Nigerian 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2010. The laws allowed for full private funding of parties’ expenditure and their contestants without any public support. This provided for all personal means which led to illicit funding and dubious sources that are banned by the regulations. Thus, this study examined these sources in respect of the campaign spending of parties and the candidates under their platforms in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic with specific reference to the 2015 General Election.

The limitations in writings on the subject matter of this study leave a large gap for researchers to fill. For instance, an investigation (Wakili et al., 2008) was conducted on political parties’ expenditure but the study was limited to few selected states in Nigeria, particularly in the north, and the findings were inadequate because, during the investigation, public funding was taking place. Public funding was halted in 2011 to enable complete private sponsorship, and since that research few other researches were specifically carried out in terms of the sources of parties’ income and expenditure, and they too were inadequate.

It has also been discovered that a lack of detailed investigation of parties’ expenditure is preventing transparency and allowing for corruption in the electoral process (Sule, Azizuddin, et al. 2017) which prompted the researchers to give attention to this neglected area because it has policy implications and academic benefit to researchers in the area of study. This work filled the gap in the area of research in terms of presenting a unique explanation of the parties’ income and expenditure using primary data from the field, in contrast to most of the existing works related to this subject, which relied on reports and secondary sources. The data obtained is relevant in terms of providing a deep insight into the area of study from privileged information. The article succeeded in presenting rich descriptive information on the sources of campaign expenditure of political parties, both the income and expenditure from the legal and political perspectives using first-hand information from those who are direct stakeholders in the subject matter that was investigated.

Thus, this work examined the various sources of political party financing in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, specifically in the 2015 General Election, and it has analysed whether the sources adhered to the legal provisions of the laws or not, and the extent to which they affected the election and its outcome. This will enable us to address the problem which will keep on reoccurring in future general elections in the country, and to sanitise the democratic system, particularly the electoral process.

Literature review

In this section, various scholastic views and analyses were critically examined and reviewed on the subject matter of the study, and this includes political party financing in Nigeria: a review, the legal basis for campaign financing in Nigeria and provisions on parties’ financing in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic campaign expenditure, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and the 2015 General Election. This enables identification of a research gap or knowledge contribution and significance of the work.

Sources of political party financing: A global view

Political parties’ obtain their campaign expenditure from various sources, and the sources differ from one country or continent to another country or continent depending on the nature of the laws and government and the system that is in existence. Generally, sources of campaign expenditure are not the major issue, which is how they are spent in most cases. The major problem is that there are many scandals in the process of generating income for political parties to execute their campaign expenses (Biezen, 2003). Biezen (2003) further observes that the rules on sources of campaign expenses of parties and political party financing are generally inadequate and handicapped across the globe, and that there is a need to have a mechanism for ensuring transparency and fair play in sourcing funds for the campaign and their spending.

The desire to monitor political parties and their sources of income is to foster transparency, accountability and good governance. This is because violation of the process by one party will give it an undue advantage and will violate fair play. Sources of the funding for political parties must be clear and open to public scrutiny as suggested by Article 12 of the Council of Europe. A few anonymous donations, according to the Article, may be waived but major sources should be announced (Doublet, 2010). There are many international efforts at curbing illegal sources of campaign expenditures of political parties and these have succeeded in taming political spending, particularly in developed democracies (Ohman, 2014).

In Africa, the major sources of parties’ campaign expenditure are from the public treasury and godfathers. The major problems identified with campaign expenditure in Africa are not only the use of state resources, but also illegal spending in terms of clientelism during the election, vote buying and other irregularities (IDEA, 2015). America is one of the most expensive democracies in the world which encourages private donations and in which the rules on sources of funding for political parties and campaign expenditure remain flexible to date. The rules are clear that all donations to parties and politicians must be disclosed and there should be no foreign donations. The flexibility of the laws allows for excessive spending (IDEA, 2015).

Asia is one of the places in which state funding or financing of political parties is minimal. Most of the sources of funding for political parties are obtained from private corporations and private donations. This has led to the commercialisation of politics and recent calls for transparency in the process of political party financing. For instance, there is the vision of a blueprint for ASEAN democracy, Free and Fair Elections from 2009 by the Asian Network for Free Election (ANFREL) and the 2012 Declaration in Bangkok for Free and Fair Elections (IDEA, 2015).

In European states, there is no uniform issue or problem in terms of the sources of funding for political parties as Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe differ in their laws on parties’ sources of income and expenditure. In these states, there is mostly the use of state resources by parties, abuse of public treasury, illicit sources and illegal expenditure. Despite the illegalities observed above, these states have some measures of regulation on sources of parties’ expenditure and income (Smilow, 2014). In Northern, Southern and Western Europe, money politics is influential and parties source for their campaign expenditure or income from private sources, donations, personal savings and donations from corporations. The cost of politics in these countries is higher and parties must gather a huge amount of money to execute campaign expenditure (Piccio, 2014).

One region that is similar to Africa in terms of the use of state resources to secure funding for political parties to undertake campaign activities is Latin America. Parties have sourced their income through illicit means because money politics in these countries is highly influential and there are weak regulations that have failed to enforce compliance in the process (Londono and Zobatto, 2014). In general, sources of money for political parties and campaign expenditure are a source of concern for policymakers and analysts globally because of its importance in guaranteeing accountability and transparency of political parties (Micheal, 2004; Pinto-Duschinky, 2004).

Political party financing in Nigeria: A review

The early experience of political party financing in Nigeria was in the First Republic (196 1966) when the first election took place in 1959 shortly before the departure of the colonisers. At that time, the electoral laws including party financing were derived from the colonial laws. During this period, there were no clearly defined and regulated laws or provisions on political party financing. Because of the lack of clear rules on party financing, candidates and their parties become responsible for financing their campaign expenditure in that period and the sources were mainly personal/private funding, donations, grants from parties, administrative charges, and the selling of party forms, logos and banners for revenue generation. There were some records of illicit spending in that period, such as, for example, the Foster Sutton Tribunal of Enquiry in 1956 which investigated the allegations of illegal spending involving one of the major political parties, the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC); and the Coker Commission of Enquiry in 1962 which investigated illegal party spending using the public treasury involving a political party in Western Nigeria, the Action Group (AG) (Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) 2005).

In the Second Republic (1979–1984), public funding was introduced in which the government gave grants to the five major political parties but the laws allowed for private funding at the same time. Section 205 of the 1979 Constitution stated clearly that political parties are the major drivers of sourcing and undertaking the responsibility of political party financing. The Section further stressed that annual subvention can be offered by the government to be shared among the parties on an equitable basis. Donations from private sources to a certain limited amount were allowed but any donation from abroad was unequivocally prohibited. The experiences in the Second Republic proved that there were faults in the laws, and politicians utilised the loopholes in the constitutional provisions to engage in illegal financing such as using money from abroad and spending above the set limit in addition to the collection of donations greater than the maximum amount that is stipulated by the law. The outcome of such illicit financing is a patron–client relationship and benefits in which the sponsors of politicians who executed their campaigns with their own money in buying votes and other favours from the voters ended up being heavily rewarded with beneficial appointments and lucrative contracts (INEC, 2005).

In the aborted Third Republic (1989–1991; popularly known as ‘aborted’ because the military started a transition to democratic rule but annulled the election in 1991), there were no specified rules for political party financing because the 1979 Constitution was not used and no any substitution was introduced. Instead, politicians and political parties were allowed to source for their campaign expenses. One major indicator that emerged in the party financing process is the fact that godfatherism played the major role and provided the major share of the funding. The other major sources include personal funding and donations since the politicians have no access then to public office and they could not secure public funding for that purpose (INEC, 2005).

In the Fourth Republic (1999–present), initially, the 1999 Constitution provided for a system closer to that of the 1979 Constitution in which public funding is provided together with private sponsorship. This has been the trend from 1999 until 2011, when the chairman of the electoral body INEC abolished public funding and allowed the parties to source their means of funding privately. The INEC succeeded in establishing a financial ceiling for maximum spending in the 2010 Electoral Act, legal sources of funding for political parties and other related laws as examined in the next section.

Political party financing in Nigeria is one of the areas that are not given adequate attention by researchers in Nigeria because it is a phenomenon that most of the electorates in Nigeria do not pay attention to. For a credible election, the status and accountability, as well as transparency, of political parties is necessary (Obazee, 2014). There are many studies on political party financing in Nigeria which focus mainly on the campaign spending. For instance, Olorunmola (2016) argued that politicians and political parties spent above the set laws and that they engaged in violation of laws such as vote buying and bribery in the process. The same view as Olorunmola’s was shared by Omilusi (2016) and USAID and UKAID (2015), that the two major parties that contested the 2015 General Election – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – spent beyond limit and that they both used the public treasury in executing their campaign expenditures. Sule, Azizuddin, et al. (2017) discovered huge corruption in the process of political party financing in Nigeria during the 2015 General Election, running to billions of dollars.

Olarinmoye (2008) argued that godfathers are the major sources of party financing in Nigeria, but that study is deficient in the sense that it identified only one source, unlike this research which has used primary sources to investigate deeper and identified many other sources, as presented in the findings section. It is also argued that the political party financing process in Nigeria is full of corruption and clientelism because it involves vote buying and promise of favours in which illegal sources are used in the campaign process to secure power (Nwagwu, 2016). The issue with political party financing in Nigeria is the loopholes in the laws which allow for illegal activities and funding as observed in the Fourth Republic (Anyadike and Eme, 2014).

Other studies such as Nwangwu and Ononogbu (2016) Aluaigba (2015), Chikodiri and Ononogbu (2016) and Sule, Azizuddin, et al. (2017) have argued that there are electoral laws that specified the legal sources of political parties’ campaign expenditure, a maximum spending limit and other related laws. The INEC is mandated to monitor and sanction the defaulters but there are flaws on the part of the laws and the electoral body in monitoring closely the sources of the funds and how they are spent. Other studies (Adetula, 2015; Aluigba 2009) agreed with Olarinmoye (2008) that godfatherism continues to be relevant in the context of Nigerian political party financing. The above statement has been found to be inadequate in providing the comprehensive and dynamic nature and pattern of the sources of political party financing in Nigeria. The investigation from the field revealed many other sources.

Legal basis for campaign expenditure of political parties in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Campaign expenditure refers to any sources of money or finance that political parties and politicians used for sponsoring their electoral activities, from campaigning to posters, billboards, printed and media advertisements and transportation as well as other expenses that are usually incurred in the process of an electioneering campaign. For instance, Section 225(2) of the Nigerian Constitution states:

Every political party shall submit to the Independent National Electoral Commission 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.

Also, Section 225(3ab) prohibits external funding when it states: ‘No political party shall hold or possess any funds or other assets outside Nigeria or be entitled to retain any funds or assets remitted or sent to it from outside Nigeria.’ In addition, Section 225(4) states that such funds above must be forfeited to the Commission within 30 days. The above sections and their sub-sections indicate that parties can sponsor their campaign expenses using any private source, be it donation, personal savings, charges and fines, selling of funds and private sponsors, but it is strictly forbidden for any party to receive funds or assets from an external source and doing so will lead to a punishment of confiscation of the funds or assets by the INEC.

In addition, the Electoral Act 2010 stipulates some regulations on finances and monitoring of campaign expenditure of political parties in Nigeria. For example, Section 88(1) provides that ‘[t]he Commission shall monitor and keeps records of the activities of all the registered political parties. Similar to the constitutional provision, the Electoral Act 2010 in Section 88(1) states:

A political party that holds or possess any fund outside Nigeria in contravention of Section 91(3)(a) of this Act commits an offence and forfeits the funds or assets purchased with such funds to the Commission and on conviction is liable to a fine of not less than N500,000 (USD 1397.758).

Furthermore, Section 90(1) of the Electoral Act states that ‘[t]he Commission shall have the power to place a limitation on the amount of money or other assets, which an individual or groups can contribute to a political party.’ The above provisions indicated that the INEC as an electoral body and the Nigerian Constitution provide some regulations on the sources of funds, limit of contribution, monitoring and auditing of parties’ income and expenditure and sanction of violators of the regulations. It means that parties can source their funds from private donations by individuals, groups, other activities and services or from members of the party, but that should not include any donation from abroad and/or possession of assets or receiving assets from external sources. However, one issue that is observed which leaves a loophole in the issue of campaign expenditure of parties is the lack of a clear statement on what is a legal source and what is not, and the concealment of the exact limit that an individual or a group can contribute. This allows for an illegal and dubious source of campaign funds. In addition, the laws do not stipulate clearly what are the legal campaign activities that are allowed for the parties to spend their funds on and what is not legal for them to spend on. It is left open. This is a vacuum that can give scope for excessive spending and illicit activities, as can be seen later in other sections of this article. This is the basic assumption of clientelism; that the process of political party financing is bedeviled with corrupt practices, and a patron–broker–client relationship where the electoral process was negotiated and bargained by all three groups, based on financial benefits in a way that encourages corruption.

Provisions of Nigerian laws on sources of political parties’ income and expenditure

The Nigerian 1999 Constitution, which is the major source of law for the Fourth Republic (1999–present), provides in its various sections the legal sources of income for political parties, expenditure and sanction for the violation as presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Section 225 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution on finances of political parties.

Sections and sub-sections	Regulations and provisions
Section 225(1)	Mandates every political party to submit to INEC its published statement of assets and liabilities.
Section 225(2)	Requires every political party to submit to INEC its annual analysis of sources of funds, assets and expenditure.
Section 225(3)	Prohibits every political party from holding funds or assets outside Nigeria and retaining the funds sourced from outside Nigeria.
Section 225(4)	Provides that the funds or assets in Section 225(3) must be forfeited to INEC within 21 days.
Section 225(5)	Provides that INEC can give directions to political parties regarding the records of their financial transactions and their scrutiny.
Section 225(6)	Provides that INEC has powers to delegate auditors to audit political parties or members of its staff.

Source: Federal Government of Nigeria, 1999. Nigerian 1999 Constitution (the compilation in a tabular form was made by the researchers, 2018).

INEC: Independent National Electoral Commission.

Furthermore, the Constitution provides rules for auditing of parties’ sources of income and the role of the electoral body, the INEC in ensuring that such laws are adhered to and the sanction attached to the violators as presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Section 226 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution on annual auditing of political parties’ finances.

Sections and sub-sections	Regulations and provisions
Section 226(1)	Makes it mandatory for every political party to prepare its annual statement of accounts and balance sheet and submit to INEC.
Section 226(2)	Provides that it is the duty of INEC to ensure whether proper records of accounts of political parties are kept or not and to prepare the records and send to the National Assembly.
Section 226(3)	Provides that every INEC official has powers to request the financial statement of political parties and must have unlimited access to them at all times in the discharge of his duties.

Source: Federal Government of Nigeria, 1999. Nigerian 1999 Constitution (the compilation in a tabular form was made by the researchers, 2018).

INEC: Independent National Electoral Commission.

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic was born of the Abdulsalami Abubakar military regime in 1999. The Constitution that saw the emergence of civilian rule in 1999 was drafted and approved by the military in which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the body that supervised the electoral process in 1999, was established (Yagboyaju, 2011). It should be noted that neither the technical committee for the drafting of the Constitution nor the government that established the INEC had the skills and the knowledge or training for doing so due to lack of sufficient knowledge and background of the process by the military. Three political parties that were registered met the electoral requirements of the INEC regulations of having presence and membership across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja. The registered parties were the All Peoples Party (APP), the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) (Yagboyaju, 2011). Later, the Republic witnessed the emergence of a multi-party system with currently more than 90 registered political parties from 1999 to date.

The Fourth Republic is a sequence of civilian government deriving its powers from the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. A military supervised general election saw the emergence of former military dictator Olusegun Obasanjo as the president in 1999. The election was flawed by irregularities, but it was welcomed by some Nigerians who eagerly embraced the regime because of their exhaustion of interest in military rule. The 2003 General Election was no better as it was generally condemned for lack of transparency and alleged wide rigging. Also, the 2007 General Election was controversial, with allegations of massive rigging by the PDP. The 2011 General Election was considered a slight improvement from the previous ones to some extent (Agbu, 2012). The 2015 General Election was overwhelmingly regarded as an improvement and a credible one, better than all the previous four elections conducted in the Fourth Republic (Ayanda and Odunayo, 2015; Ewi, 2015; Nwagwu, 2015). The recently concluded 2019 General Election recorded further improvement in the process of the electoral conduct.

The history of Nigerian political parties shows that Nigeria maintains a multi-party system and that the parties are ethnic and regional in nature. In order to arrest the daunting effects of the ethnic and regional influence of political parties in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, it was regulated that for a political party to be registered, it must have state offices in at least two-thirds of the states, which is 24 in addition to the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja. While many political parties were registered from 1999, INEC deregistered some of them, based on the grounds of poor performance and lack of a national outlook, with a view to minimising ethnic and regional politics. Regulations were provided in the Constitution for the operation and registration of political parties as well as the financing of political parties to ensure transparency and fair play in the rules of the game (Benjamin, 2015: 68).

The mistakes on the constitutional provisions for political party financing in the previous Republics caused the designers of the 1999 Constitution to enshrine some sections that will regulate political party funding. However, the 1999 election and the previous electoral acts up to 2006 still maintained the past tradition of public funding of political parties through subventions from the government.

Details of subventions to political parties are not readily available, but it is common knowledge that political parties are to some extent are funded by Nigerian taxpayers. This makes accountability and transparency in party financing imperative and also issues of great national importance. There were no available records on the exact amount of money spent by candidates and political parties. However, there are indications of heavy reliance on private funding in the last two elections in 1999 and 2003 in the Fourth Republic. Former President Obasanjo declared that ‘the parties and candidates spent together during the last election (2003) more than would have been needed to fight a successful war’ (INEC, 2003: 9).

A financial ceiling was set up in the 2006 Electoral Act to curb such excessive spending but it was violated by the politicians and their political parties alike. As such, the 2010 Electoral Acts recommended and withdraw public subventions from the government to political parties and made the affairs of political party financing an exclusive affair of political parties and candidates’ private sponsorship.

The 2015 General Election

The 28 March and 14 April 2015 General Election marked another turn in the history of Nigerian politics as it was the first time that the opposition unseated the incumbent president in a successful election. Of the 67,422,005 million registered voters, only 31,740,490 million were accredited for 2015 Presidential Election. A total of 29, 432, 083 million of the votes were cast, with 97% of the votes valid. The 2015 General Election and the outcome were entirely different from the previous elections in Nigeria in many different ways. In the 2015 Presidential Election, 14 political parties contested for the post of presidency; fewer votes were cast in 2015 than in 2011 by 25%; the incumbent lost to the opposition by 45% to 54%; and the opposition won more states: 21 out of 36 (Centre for Public Policy Alternative, 2015).

The results of the Gubernatorial elections held on 12 April 2015 indicated that the new ruling party APC won 19 out of 31, making a total of 61.29 % of the states, while the new opposition PDP won 12 or 38.71% of the seats. There was already a state controlled by APGA Anambra and Osun controlled by APC, Ondo Labour Party, Edo APC and Bayelsa PDP, which made a total of 36 states if added together. In total, APC controlled 21 states (58.33%) and PDP has 13 seats (36.11 %), with APGA and the Labour Party each controlling 1 state (2.78%) (INEC, 2017).

In the National Assembly Elections which were held the same day as the Presidential Elections on 28 March 2017 involving the Senate and Federal House of Representatives, the APC won most of the seats in the upper chamber with 55.05% and the lower chamber with 62.5%, which enabled the APC to form the leadership of both the houses, thereby replacing the PDP from its stronghold majority leadership of 16 years’ rule. While the analysts, observers, civil societies and scholars as well as public commentators attested to the credibility of the election, one of the issues that were not given adequate attention is the process of political party financing and its impacts on the outcome of the election, as discussed below, and this made the research a significant contribution (INEC, 2017).

Framework of analysis

Clientelism is a framework of analysis that attempts to explain the nature of distribution of goods, services, political appointments and benefits of holding public offices among interested groups in a given society. The theory emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and it specifically involves a complex of interwoven relationships: client, broker and patron among political groups of different strata (Roniger, 2004). Clientelism is a theory that emanated to explain the political economy of governance, election and societal distribution of scarce resources through an agreed contractual process of the client–patron relationship (Daramont, 2010). Clientelism is a political process or activity that involves bargaining for acquiring power by politicians through vote buying and other informal means as well as rewarding voters and political godfathers or sponsors for their loyalty and support that was given during the scramble for power and competition to win political office (Gans-Morse et al., 2010). The theory is simply an explanation of how the patron–client relationship emerged in a particular state, starting from struggling for power – particularly election into a political office (Isaksson and Bigsten, 2013). Apart from the client–patron relationship, clientelism can sometimes take the form of coercion and subversion of the political process to manipulate political power (Stokes, 2013: 67). The relationship between client, broker and patron is explained diagrammatically below for easier perception.

Figure 1.

Showing patron–client relationship in a political process or during election.

Figure 2.

Showing a three-way patron–broker–client relationship in a political process for acquiring power.

The first diagram indicates a direct correlation between the patrons and their client while the second diagram illustrates that there might be intermediaries called brokers who prompt for the client and relate with the client on behalf of the patron. Most of the African democracies are seen as clientelistic in nature where African leaders tend to distribute personal favours in return for political support, and offices and resources are allocated based on kinship and ethnic ties, particularly in the Nigerian context where it has been the practice for many decades (Lindberg & Morrison, 2008; Isaksson and Bigsten, 2013).

The theory has five major assumptions. The first assumption is that the relationship is dyadic between the patron and client. Secondly, the relationship is asymmetrical. Third, the relationship is personal. Fourth, the relationship is reciprocal; and, finally, the relationship is voluntary. Clientelism as a theory of explaining power politics has many weaknesses, top among which is its assumption that the relationship is personal and voluntary. In most cases, the relationship between the patron and client is official because of the returned favour after securing public office through contracts, kickbacks and juicy appointments (Lindberg & Weghorst, 2010; Stokes, 2013: 67) sometimes involving the use of coercion and manipulation for compliance.

In conclusion, clientelism is a framework that can clearly explain the context of this research work in terms of the sources of campaign expenditure of political parties in the 2015 General Election in Nigeria. This is because while clientelism is perceived in its broad concept as a means of sharing political favours and national resources by politicians, in the Nigerian context some of the scholars mentioned above believed that it is beyond that. It is a process which can be extended to include the process in which politicians generate their sources of funding for campaign expenditure through a linkage of patron, broker and client relationship which can be expanded to include the way in which these funds are spent and the outcome of the expenditure in the political office after election. The election here is the key factor in this study. The major concern is how the electoral campaigns are undertaken from a clientele perspective, as discussed above. Clientelism can clearly explain this work in the sense that it assumes that politicians and voters formed a relationship for a mutual benefit, and transparency can be compromised in this case. Thus, politicians used money and other resources excessively in political party financing in order to secure victory for achieving their benefits. This explains clearly why the regulations are violated and manipulated leading to a problem of transparency and illicit funding in the electoral process.

Materials and methods

The paper used a qualitative method of data collection and analysis. Qualitative method is the structural and epistemological means of generation of a wide and varieties of data using different techniques where a small rich data is used to generate many answers and findings (Bogdan and Biklen, 2007: 23). It involves the use of interviews, observation, narration, the study of issues, evidences and sources such as maps, signals, symbols and other objects for the generation of ideas and data. This study is a qualitative case study and specifically a particularistic case study (Sekaran, 2003: 149). It is a particular case study because it used the Fourth Republic as the premise of analysis and the 2015 General Election as the specific case of applying the context of the study.

The work used both primary and secondary sources of data collection. The primary source is the use of an in-depth personal interview with some stakeholders and senior officials of the agencies that are directly involved in the process of parties’ activities, campaign monitoring and regulations as well as election conduct. In this regard, informants/participants were selected from five categories: politicians, party national executive members, senior officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), expert/academicians in the area of study, and focus group discussion with some members of civil societies in Abuja. The other primary source is government documents such as the Nigerian 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2010. The secondary source includes materials such as textbooks, journals and Internet sources for literature review and formation of the theoretical framework.

The data obtained was coded into specific numbers and categories. The informants were categorised into category A (politicians) where four were selected and coded as A1 to A4; category B is party national executive members where four were selected and coded as B1 to B4; category C is the senior INEC officials where three were selected and coded as C1 to C3; category D is the experts/academicians in which three were selected and coded D1 to D3; and category E is the FDG with some members of civil societies where five were selected and coded E1 to E5. The total number selected is 19 and it is average according to the recommendation of Sharan (2009: 20) of the maximum number of 30 for a qualitative interview. This has been presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Categories of informants/participants selected for the interview.

Category	Interpretation	Coding	Frequency
A	Politicians	A1–A4	4
B	Members of Party National Executive	B1–B4	4
C	Senior INEC officials	C1–C3	3
D	Experts/academicians	D1–D3	3
E	FGD civil societies	E1–E5	5
Total	Five groups	Five coding	19

Source: Field survey, 2017.

INEC: Independent National Electoral Commission.

The data obtained from the field was grouped into thematic analytical interpretations, tables and charts for discussions and findings.

In the first place, the researchers who are stakeholders with classified information on the subject matter provide useful comments. The first category represents politicians and the criteria used for selecting them are accessibility and distribution of political ranks. Politicians are difficult to access in Nigeria due to their busy schedules and, as such, the researchers identified the ones who are representatives of the people at the national level who were accessed for the conduct of the interview through a connection from their political allies who are closer to them. A serving senator from the ruling APC, a serving member of the Federal House of Representative under the platform of PDP, a gubernatorial candidate under the APC and a serving Member State House of Assembly are interviewed in this category which represents four of the six available electoral offices in the country.

In category B, the selection is the identification of the national party executives of the four major political parties that made significant efforts in securing electoral offices during the 2015 General Election across the nation and these parties are the APC, PDP, SDP and DPP. In category C, the criteria used in selecting the interviewers was the selection of the most senior officers in the electoral body based on the units or departments that directly have responsibility for the monitoring and sanctioning of political parties’ finances and expenditure. They are Director Political Party Monitoring, Director Operations, and Director Finance and Auditing Department.

In category D, the researchers used the criteria of identifying scholars in political science in Nigeria who specialised in political parties, political finance and elections, and the three that excelled and distinguished themselves in these areas with numerous contributions in the subject matter are chosen from three different universities. In the last category, focus group discussion with the civil societies, the researchers identified five civil societies that are specifically studying and monitoring political parties and elections in Nigeria. There are many such societies, but the most outstanding ones were selected based on their track records of publications and activities across the country.

The research used semi-structured questions where the five groups were asked different structured but flexible questions on the subject matter under investigation. Informants are allowed to respond based on the questions and if they have something more to say they are freely given the option to do so. Each group was asked relevant questions based on its relationship with the sources of finance of political parties. For example, the first category (A Politicians) was asked about their sources of fund for campaign activities and their parties and whether they adhered to the provisions of the electoral laws on that or not. The second category (B Party officials) was asked how and where they sourced funds to undertake party activities, their level of familiarity with the electoral laws on political parties’ finance and their level of compliance. The third category (C INEC officials) were asked whether they have provided accessible electoral laws on sources of income for political parties, whether they monitor the parties’ sources of income and expenditure before and during the elections and if they have identified issues that require sanction and the extent of the sanctioning if any.

Section D (Academicians) were asked such questions as whether the current laws on the sources of campaign expenditure and income for political parties are adequate or if there is a need for review. Other questions include whether the parties are complying, the electoral body is monitoring, and if the public is conscious of the process of political parties’ sources of income and expenditure. Category E (Civil societies) were asked some questions on their role in monitoring parties’ sources of income and what they are doing to create public awareness about that and their perception of the level of compliance and INEC’s response towards that.

Discussions and findings

Discussions

The sources of political party financing for the parties and their candidates are mainly identified as six according to the views of the informants generated from the field work as supported by other previous works. The sources are presented here thematically and discussed for interpretation and findings.

Grants

In this category, many of the informants agreed that grants from some people and organisations are one of the sources of political party financing for the parties on one hand, and are another source for the contestants where the parties raise money and offer grants to the candidates that represent them in an election. Many of them mentioned that there are various sources of political party financing out of which grants from political parties form a large part of it. Once you have secured the nomination for your party and you will contest under its platform as its representative, a considerable amount of money is given to cover campaign expenses. In addition, other informants suggested that grants from parties are also part of the campaign sponsors of politicians, particularly the ruling party which has the advantage of accessibility to the public treasury as in the case of 2015 General Election where they used public resources to meet their campaign expenditure. But parties cannot give candidates enough funding and therefore they need to rely on other sources from personal savings, family, friends and fundraising, or on wealthy individuals who are godfathers.

In the above instance, the parties’ executive offered the platform of representation for contestants based on who pays more highly, which is a patron–client relationship where the politicians are the patrons in this case and the parties’ executive members are the client. This means that clientelism is not only between the politicians or parties and the electorates, but also between or among the parties and their representatives too. Other studies also support the above position, as in Wakili et al.’s (2008) findings that parties offered grants to their contestants, where a minority of 24.6% agreed that candidates were assisted by their parties, but the majority of 86.4% in the study believed that donation from wealthy individuals is the major source of campaign funds for political parties. This further consolidated the applicability of the clientelism theory which assumes a beneficial relationship between political sponsors and the sponsored.

Godfathers and godfatherism

One of the major sources of political party financing identified by the informants in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, especially in the 2015 General Election, is godfatherism or godfathers/sponsors. They agreed that godfathers are the major financiers of elections in this country, using their resources to sponsor politicians in return for a material benefit ranging from lucrative contracts, appointments or an award of projects in favour of their locality. Indeed, godfathers sponsored politicians while at the same time controlling the government indirectly after the elections. It was an agreed personal contract on a mutual understanding, sometimes entered into agreement through a spiritual oath of loyalty to the godfathers. Most of the politicians or candidates have insufficient resources to undertake their campaign expenditure as they rely heavily on wealthy individuals to support their political ambition and election expenses.

The above statement is a clear application of clientelism within the political context of Nigeria, especially in elections. The electoral process has become so expensive that only the wealthy or those supported by godfathers can run for office. There is the disturbing issue of dubious business tycoons sponsoring candidates with a questionable source of money. The increasing influence of godfatherism in contemporary Nigerian politics can be linked to the influence of money in electoral politics through unlimited party financing, as was witnessed in all the elections so far in the Fourth Republic. The absence of effective regulation of the amount of private funding that a political party can receive from private sources made all forms of political clientelism attractive and possible (INEC, 2005: 9).

The dilemma of political party financing for both the parties and the candidates are readily resolved by godfathers or wealthy individuals who provide adequate funds for financing parties and elections of the parties’ candidates where an agreement was reached between the two for a certain favour in terms of contracts, paybacks, lucrative appointments and other undue advantages. Not all political contestants are financially sound and therefore cannot raise on their own a substantial amount of money to finance their political campaign and compete in a violently corrupt political system in Nigeria (Human Rights Watch, 2007: 32). In return, they demand a substantial degree of control over the sponsored politicians and government at large, not for public benefits but, rather, for direct financial returns in the form of resources stolen by their protégés, or lucrative government contracts awarded without following due process, as further opportunities for graft and wealth accumulation (Human Rights Watch, 2007: 33). Godfathers are service providers who resolve the voter compliance problem of political parties in their scramble to dominate political power in Nigeria. Godfathers are brokers or intermediaries between political parties and the electorates as well as manipulation of the political process to favour them (Olarinmoye, 2008).

The study by Wakili et al. (2008) also confirmed the above statement by the informant where the respondents were reported to have agreed by a majority of 77.9% that parties source for their campaign funds from wealthy individuals and the wealthy individuals or godfathers controlled the parties and invest for a return. This has further confirmed the clientelism theory that election financing is a business of investment between the godfathers and their godsons. It has also implied the application of the theoretical framework within the context of the information and the literature discussed above. For instance, the role of godfathers and the trio relationship of patron–broker–client indicate that the theory is practical and suitable in this context as this is exactly what the theory assumes, and it has been displayed here from the information provided by informants and scholars as discussed above.

Loot from the public treasury

Looting of the public treasury has become a norm among Nigerian politicians for their personal enrichment. It is believed that one of the methods by which politicians have sponsored themselves or financed their elections campaigns is through the use of illegal looted money. There are many works that justified that allegation in addition to the views provided by informants here in respect of that. Some of the informants who were interviewed in different groups agreed with that notion. They all believed that politicians engaged in the dubious practices of looting the public treasury through false contracts awards and inflation of contracts as well as other corrupt practices in order to self-enrich themselves, and these illegal monies, in return, are also spent illegally through sponsoring their political campaigns in terms of vote buying, bribing of electoral officials and the sponsorship of thugs to intimidate voters and opposition, all in order to win at all costs.

These views are supported by many works, such as a study conducted by Wakili et al. (2007) which studied political party financing using a survey method in Nigeria, and one of their findings was that the electorates themselves admitted that they were aware that politicians steal public funds to sponsor their campaigns. Other scholars too support this view, including Walecki (2008), Olarinmoye (2008), Adetula (2008), Nkechi and Innocent (2014), Kura (2014) and Nwagwu (2016). This simply means that political financing was conducted in Nigeria from illegal sources and is transacted in illegal spending.

The clientelism theory can be established practically here, considering the fact that public office holders used the public treasury to sponsor their campaign activities which are clientele activities; a corrupt practice where illegal financing occurs through dubious means with the power holder, godfathers and voters engaged in the act of money sharing for electoral victory by one group and for electoral support by the other group. A new dimension of political party financing emerged which differs from the previous practice. Initially, godfathers used their wealth to sponsor their anointed godsons in return for loyalty and reward benefit. In the present situation, the political class loot the public treasury and offer to the identified godfathers to use as a means of financing the politicians’ political ambition.

Personal/private source

Most of the informants agreed that personal/private funding of elections campaign is the major source of political party financing in the 2015 General Election, with all the informants from categories A to E agreeing unanimously that personal funding is the actual source of campaign funding in Nigeria. Even the electoral body INEC testified to the fact that since the abolition of state grants to parties, the major source of campaign financing is now private source (INEC, 2010). One of the informants here revealed that

The major source of campaign financing in Nigeria today is, of course, private sources and personal means even the APC that claimed to be a saint cannot reveal to you the sources of its campaign finances not even President Muhammadu Buhari himself.

However, the above view cannot be relied upon to say that the source of political party financing is heavily reliant on personal/private sources. Most of the informants immediately mentioned this aspect as the first or major source but, at the same time, many informants believed that other sources are relied upon to supplement the personal/private funding as indicated below:

In the real sense of it, nobody can tentatively tell you his actual source of campaign financing apart from the private source but, it is not the only source that politicians and parties relied on to finance their campaign expenditure as they sourced from many other sources especially wealthy individuals and parties’ grant.

The above disclosed clearly that the source of campaign financing is mostly from private sources and personal income and this clearly explains why the monitoring of such funds or setting a maximum spending limit is very difficult and cannot be possible because nobody knows how the private income was generated or disbursed. Many scholars (Adetula, 2008; Aiyede & Aregbeyen 2015 Biezen 2003; INEC, 2005; Olorunmola, 2016; Walecki, 2008) believe that it is a very difficult task to monitor or to limit campaign finances or to avoid corrupt practices. They also, like the informants above, agree that private funding is the major source so far.

Selling of forms and other charges

Another source of campaign financing identified by the informants is the selling of forms and other charges such as fines, fees, administrative charges and other services like party membership card registration. However, few of the informants see this source as a reasonable means or strong source for political party financing. For instance, only one informant in category A, one in category B, one in category C, one in category D and two in category E mentioned this source in the interview. The above position has been supported by the survey work of Wakili et al. (2008) in their studies of financing political parties in the 2003 and 2007 elections where they revealed that about 16.7% of their respondents narrated that selling of nomination forms and other charges provided a considerable source of income for parties, which they used for the funding of their campaign activities.

From the above views, it can be seen that the clientalism theory can explain both the informant’s position and the scholars’ views because the parties’ charges and selling of forms denote an agreed investment where the candidates feel that for the services or platform given to them to acquire power and other material benefit after winning offices, they continue to pay dues and other charges as well as donations to the party or membership registration continuously while the party in return gets the material benefit or appointments or contracts for its members from the candidates if they win an influential political position on the party’ platform. This is a clear practical application of clientele activities. This is exactly what was practised in the financing of the 2015 General Election and indeed, the previous elections.

Donations

Many of the informants who were interviewed also believed that donations from family and friends form a significant part of the sources of campaign expenditure in political financing in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, particularly the 2015 General Election where informants from categories A, B, C, E and F revealed that donations are one of the major sources of funding, with three of the informants in category A, three in category B, one in category C, two in category D and three in category E all believing in this position. The most articulated view is presented below:

Donations from family and friends is one of the major means of sourcing for campaign funding by politicians and parties during elections and it is mostly generated either through a fundraising committee or at private level by the politicians and the donators.

Also, the survey study conducted by Waliki et al. (2007) revealed the responses of the respondents indicating that donations are one of the major means of political party financing in Nigeria with a frequency of 22.3%. This means that donations are one of the sources and it is on record that both the existing study and the informants’ views testified to that from this study. In addition, other informants also believed that in the 2015 General Election, donations were one of the sources of political party financing and campaign expenditure, as revealed by some of them below:

The politicians seek for donations to run for an office while in some instances, like the incumbents, they tend to be pampered by their cronies through organising a fundraising dinner the way they raised about N23 billion for President Jonathan in August 2014.

Also, another informant disclosed that

[s]ome political office contestant in the 2015 General Election had their supporters organising a fundraising for them through various means as in the case of President Jonathan it was organised by his party members while President Muhammadu Buhari sold recharge card using one of the telecommunication companies for the masses to contribute in his campaign financing. He was able to raise around N190 million from that source.

The theory of clientelism fits in here, where it has been exhibited clearly how the incumbent president in 2014 was surrounded by his political stooges and godfathers to raise a huge sum of N23 billion for his re-election campaign (Ukase, 2015). It is indisputably clear here that all those who contributed did so with an anticipated benefit in future, with extra profit if President Jonathan wins. It simply shows how clientelism works practically within the cycle of power brokers.

The study also summarised the above informants’ views in a tabular form to reveal the pattern of the responses and how they believed in the frequency of the sources according to their categories (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Summary of sources of campaign funding for political parties and candidates in the 2015 General Elections.

Category	Informants	Responses
A (Politicians)	First Second Third Fourth	Self-sponsorship, donations, grants from parties and gifts. Gifts, personal sources and loot from the public treasury. Gifts, personal savings, donations and private sources. Personal/private source, wealthy individuals and parties.
B (Party stakeholders)	First Second Third Fourth	Unknown, loot from the public treasury. Private funding and grants from political parties. Selling of forms by parties and personal for candidates. Selling of forms, donations and personal savings.
C (INEC staff)	First Second Third	Private sources, personal savings, donations and fundraising. Looted public funds, godfathers and private sources. Godfathers, private sources and fundraising.
D (Academicians)	First Second Third	Private funding, godfathers and personal sources. Godfathers and looting of the public treasury. Personal means and political financiers as well as grants.
E (Focus group discussion)	First Second Third Fourth Fifth	Donations, godfathers, private funding and looting. Personal savings, donations and administrative charges. Private sources, donations and anonymous sources. Donations and sell of party charges. Private means and other personal support.

Source: Field survey, 2018.

INEC: Independent National Electoral Commission.

The views of the informants are presented in Table 4 for further illustration.

Figure 3.

Sources of campaign financing during the 2015 General Election.

Findings

The major findings in this research revealed that in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic there is currently no provision for the public funding of parties. However, in the First, Second and Aborted Third Republic, and in some years of the Fourth Republic, there was the provision in the Constitution for public funding of political parties. But the 2010 Electoral Reform abolished the public funding entirely. This enables for an absolute private and personal party funding. The research also discovered that there are six major sources of political party financing identified by the informants from the field and the previously existing scholastic researches. The research also found that there are well-articulated rules and regulations on political party financing in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, even though these are inadequate, especially in terms of the campaign maximum spending limit and donations limit which are inadequate and not clear.

The research discovered that there are violations of campaign regulations and the use of public funds illegally for campaign sponsorship, which made the 2015 General Election the most expensive election in Nigeria and Africa, and this phenomenon questions the transparency of the electoral process despite wide claims of credibility and improvement in the general conduct of elections. The study also revealed that clientelism in its entire assumption and practical application has occurred in the process of political party financing in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, especially in the 2015 General Election.

Conclusion and recommendations

The paper concludes that there is a problem with the entire process of political party financing in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and that there is an urgent need to revisit the process and some parts of the regulations, especially the legal regime, political will and sanction, as well as the review of the maximum campaign spending limit in order to meet the current challenge and reality on the ground so as to avoid the illegality of excessive spending and violation of rules. As a result of that, the paper recommends the following: the regulations from the 1999 Constitution and the 2010 Electoral Act, particularly the aspect that deals with the sources of income of political parties, should be reviewed to be more comprehensive and practicable. The maximum campaign spending limit should be reviewed upwards to ensure that parties and their contestants do not exceed their limit of campaign spending so as to limit sourcing of funds from illegal means such as the public treasury and donations above the limit set by the law. The policymakers should think of public funding as an alternative to foster accountability and transparency, accountability and compliance, or empower the electoral body to have unfettered access to the private sources at all times. The work also concludes that severe punishment should be provided for any party or candidate that violates the provisions of the law on the legal sources of political party income and expenditure, such as a ban from political activities for a certain number of years or a total permanent ban. The civil societies, academia, international electoral agencies, international observers and political pressure groups should intensify a public enlightenment campaign against the use of the public funds for campaign spending and its outcomes such as vote buying, bribery and illegal acts in political party financing to ensure transparency, and there is a need for quarterly workshops and seminars for the parties and politicians on their role in good governance and transparency.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Babayo Sule

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