IMPLICATIONS OF THE LONG ELECTIONEERING PERIOD
more headroom to operate. However, INEC is not the sole beneficiary. Having the election notice/timetable on time provides clarity and certainty to political actors and the country at large. At some point, there were wild speculations about the 2023 elections. INEC’s unveiling of the election timetable took the sting out of this distraction. This made it easier for all those involved in election matters to plan better. Certainty and clarity can thus be identified as the fourth benefit.
The fifth benefit is that having the candidates on time and ensuring that they campaign for long should provide the electorate ample time to properly scrutinise the candidates and their promises. All things being equal, this should empower citizens to make more informed choices at the polls.
And lastly, some of the political parties can also benefit from the added time. They will have enough time to adjust to emergencies and to upturn, maintain or regain momentums. If a day is accepted as a long time in politics, a period of eight months is clearly a very, very long time in an election year. That is enough time for any possibility. This should provide some comfort to those interested in upstaging the status quo and those exploring viable electoral alliances and other such permutations. Time is on their side, though not in absolute terms.
As stated earlier, there are also downsides to this unusual extension, and some of them are quite substantial. The first and a very obvious one is that the law has by default extended the lame-duck period. The moment the candidates emerged, attention shifted away from the president and other term-barred incumbents who have about one year left of their tenures. That is enough time to still get some key things done or at least to complete their major programmes and initiatives.
But most of these incumbents have logged out and everyone else is distracted, including most of their aides who are busy positioning themselves for post-May 29 realities. The traditional lameduck period is usually between the election and the swearing-in of a new administration. Now, that period has become more elastic, and stretched way back.
The second related downside is that active politicking has completely upstaged governance. I had mentioned this concern earlier on this page and on other platforms. A cynical fellow rebutted that not much governance happens in this country anyway. From little governance, we have effectively backflipped into the zone of near zero governance.
During the primaries, we were all witnesses to how almost all the state governors abandoned their states and relocated to Abuja, and it is no secret that very little gets done in the states when the governors are out of town. The National Assembly was on recess. The president, the governors and other party leaders were constantly meeting. You don’t need to be in the room to know that governance was not on the agenda of those meetings.
The conclusion of the primaries has not dramatically reversed this easily predicted crowding out of governance by politics. The political actors in elected positions are busy dealing with the fallouts of the primaries (very evident in the National Assembly where about 70% didn’t get the tickets to contest) or getting ready to campaign for themselves, their successors or their parties’ presidential flagbearers.
Even when actual campaigns will start in September, it is better to write off the period between the primaries and February/March next year as a time lost to elections. The few governance and policy issues that manage to swim to the surface will likely be addressed with an eye on the election. Our politicians, including elected ones, are not known for multi-cropping, especially during election season. Governance is too important to trade off so flippantly, especially for a country at this present pass.
Extending the campaign period from roughly eight weeks to twenty weeks officially has huge financial implications. Running for elections costs serious money, even for basic things like posters, jingles, transportation, and polling agents. Yes, the electoral act sets limits on campaign finance. But it is difficult to really monitor how much candidates and parties expend on campaigns. It is plausible that most serious candidates in past elections even spent beyond the expanded limit set by the new law. What is not difficult to figure out is that the sum needed to run a serious campaign for sixty days will not be the same as what is needed to run the same campaign for 150 days.
Also, the 90 days between the emergence of candidates and the commencement of public campaigns should for all intents and purposes be filed as the unofficial, non-public campaign period. Candidates will attend and host meetings; they will speak at events and to the media. If that is not campaigning, then maybe nothing is. And even when it is subtle and below the surface, it will not be cost-free, even if not captured officially as campaign expenses. Effectively, the law has offered an eight-month campaign window that can be divided into: three months for low intensity, non-public campaigns and five months for high-intensity, public campaigns.
This additional financial burden will task all candidates, no matter how long they have been in this game and the depth of their support systems. They will need a lot of stamina and will need to figure out how to pace themselves for this unusually long period. This will be the key question for their strategists: how do you stay visible and connected without exhausting your finite war chest?
No matter how they answer this question or the strategy they develop and deploy, the additional resource burden will impact candidates differently. Those with lean resources and limited financial networks are likely to be at a disadvantage, and those with deep pockets and in control of patronage systems are likely to be better resourced for a race that has been suddenly transformed from a sprint to a marathon. The playing field is likely to become more uneven. Talk about unintended consequences, because I doubt this was the intention of those who advocated for the elongation.
I will argue for reducing the electioneering window to five months. So, for an election in February, the primaries can start in September instead of April in the current law or in December as was the previous practice. Five months can still afford us most of the lofty benefits of the elongation without saddling us with some of its crippling and possibly unintended downsides on governance and entry barrier to elective office. For sure, there will always be trade-offs. But it is important to always think through options, and to always ensure that serious and unavoidable losses can be minimised.