2023, BUHARI AND THE SUCCESSION BATTLE
every presidential request. The Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) has been very supportive, and individually, almost every state governor, even in the opposition People’s democratic Party (PDP), has been playing the good boy to the president. Not even disruptive protests by civil society have been directly proportional to the administration’s general lack of direction.
In a Channels TV interview earlier in the year, Buhari had, in a blank stare, dismissively said that the 2023 election was not his problem. Yet some governors of the ruling party have been quoted as saying the president would decide or guide the party in deciding the candidate for the top job. Indeed, there has been a whispering campaign that Buhari’s endorsement would determine who picks the APC presidential ticket at the end of the day. Consequently, a swirl of speculation has followed not one or two among those who have bought, or have had bought for them, the party’s presidential nomination forms as Buhari’s joker. It would be interesting to see how a presidential endorsement for one person on the growing list of aspirants would not end up a problem. Or wasn’t Buhari in that interview simply waving a political sleight of hand, having a dissimulation of sorts behind the blank stare?
Isn’t it curious that the APC would sell its presidential nomination forms at N100 million and Buhari, who in 2014 claimed to have taken a bank loan to procure the same forms, would as president and party supremo find this comfortable? Is there a hidden catch somewhere? Why would former House Speaker Dimeji Bankole, a man who didn’t have enough delegates to pick the governorship ticket of Ogun State in 2014, decide to waste N100 million to buy the nomination forms for a ticket he knew he may not even have the vote of a single delegate from his state? Why would the APC collect the nomination fees from two different coalitions who have made it their self-assigned duties to co-opt CBN (Central bank of Nigeria) Governor Godwin Emefiele and ADB (Africa Development Bank) President Akinwumi Adesina into the presidential contest when both are evidently not party members? In accepting payment for forms in the name of Emefiele and Adesina, isn’t the APC implying that both are closet members of the party? Or did the party simply collect the payment on false pretence? How would five ministers in the administration resort to similar narrative, claiming that a group of friends or associates or supporters paid for the forms?
Or is this ongoing charade simply a grand scheme to, like a colleague argued, launder money into APC to fund the party’s campaigns? Part V, Sections 75-97 of the Electoral Act 2022 focuses, among others, on the registration, structure, management, monitoring, funding, campaigns and election expenses of political parties. The Act demands transparency on source of funds, limits campaign donations, puts a cap on election expenses, and prescribes sanctions for infractions. Section 87.1 empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) thus:
“The Commission shall have power to place limitation on the amount of money or other assets which an individual can contribute to a political party or candidate and to demand such information on the amount donated and source of the funds.”
On campaign donations from individuals and corporates, Section 88.8 states that, “No individual or other entity shall donate to a candidate more than N50,000,000.” Moving from the general to the specific on election expenses, Section 88.2 states, “The maximum election expenses to be incurred by a candidate at a presidential election shall not exceed N5,000,000.” In respect of a political party, Section 89.2 adds, “Election expenses incurred by a political party for the management, or the conduct of an election shall be determined by the Commission in consultation with the political parties.”
With this Act, it is impossible as it was in previous elections for a candidate or party to arm-twist top businessmen and their usually faceless friends to donate billions at campaign fundraisers. Was that the challenge APC wanted to side-track by unduly jacking up the nomination fees to different offices and encouraging the mushrooming of aspirants? Isn’t it possible that some senators and ministers and former governors and some other endorsement-seeking public officials got their business fronts and government contractors in the guise of one coalition, or one group, or the other to procure their forms? Isn’t the deluge of presidential aspirants on the ruling party’s platform not some dubiously clever way of infringing on the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 without necessarily breaking the law; or to use a football language, committing a technical foul on an opponent to escape referee sanction?
With the APC game of brinkmanship, why would the preponderance of those ministers pretending to be in the race for the party’s presidential ticket care to resign? And why would Buhari force their hands to so do? Didn’t he say the 2023 election was not his problem?