IN POLITICAL PARTY FINANCE AND THE ROLES OF NIGERIA ELECTORAL MANAGEMENT BODY

Abstract

In Nigeria the issue of party funding has for long posed a serious concern to watchers of our political scene. In the First and Second Republics it was an issue that was hotly debated in the state parliaments and the National Assembly. It was the fear of allowing the so called ‘moneybags’ to put political parties in their pockets that led the regime of Ibrahim Babangida in the nineties to make government partly responsible for their funding. Under current Nigerian conditions, however, most political parties lack ideologies, not issue oriented, but are merely zero-issue alliances of notables who are able to control and, often enough, manipulate party structures, candidacies and even the general electoral process itself. Most parties are vehicles in the hands of few political entrepreneurs, who invest huge amount of money and expect concurrent rewards on such investment in the form of public works and procurement contracts, prebendal appointments of cronies to public offices and other forms of prebendal activity. The fallout has led to mass electoral/political violence and political destabilization and disempowerment of the generality of the Nigerian electors, the exclusion of alternative parties seeking to participate in electoral politics and the absence of an effective system to regulate political finance. This research seeks to explore the concept of political finance. It will equally attempt to concisely analyze the extant legal framework regulating political finance in Nigeria, highlights their inadequacies with a view of reforming these inadequacies for a better political finance management and best practices and proffer suggestions on the ways forward, recommends that political party financing be monitored and strict regulations should be introduced to punish the offenders.