Jega kicks against direct primaries, says presidential candidates to spend N2b to fund campaign

From Desmond Mgboh, Kano

A former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega has expressed reservation over the use of direct system of primary elections, saying that under the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, it would take over N2 billion for a presidential aspirant to successfully fund his campaign.

Jega, who delivered a lead paper, at the North West Zonal Conference on Whistle Blowers Policy in Nigeria, on Tuesday, confessed that, “To be a president, you have to be able to raise at least N2billion- and tell me who can legitimately, given the salary structure in this country, raise such an amount?

“So, where is the president going to get N2billion to legitimately put into his election campaign?

Jega regretted that the same funding hurdle for Presidential candidates was also applicable to others who are vying for other elective offices in the country, saying that it would cost nothing less than N1billion and N500 million for governors and senators to fund their campaigns respectively under the new arrangement.

He confessed that while the bigger political parties and those already occupying elective offices may access state resources to mitigate the campaign financing hurdle, it is a different game for smaller political parties and individual entities, who have no way of raising such kind of money to fund their campaigns.

He, however, applauded the Electoral Act for adopting the electronic voting system; in particular for adopting an electronic system of processing election results, saying that this would improve the quality of election outcomes in the country.

The political scientist and one- time Vice Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, in his lead paper entitled: “Assessment of the Implementation of the Whistle Blowers Policy in Nigeria: Issues, Challenges and the Way Forward”, lamented that the Whistle Blowers bill, which has been with the National Assembly for years has not been treated with the seriousness it deserved.

Jega agreed that the bill had passed through a hard time in the hand of the legislators and was almost swept aside a few years ago, after its second reading, but for the resilience of Nigerians and the civil society groups, who mounted pressure and ensured its retention in the National Assembly

He suggested that lack of interest in passing the bill may not be unconnected with the fact that the bill, if it becomes law, would undermine the interests of some of the legislators who are corrupt.

Speaking on the challenges of the Whistle Blowers policy, Jega recalled that the policy was originally conceived as a voluntary act and a citizen- based responsibility, with no a financial reward.

He insisted that the act of offering financial reward to the blower has somehow eroded the ethical foundation of the policy as an instrument of fighting corruption.

He also raised a number of issues regarding the implementation of the policy, ranging from absence of the policy at the state and council levels to the absence of a legal framework for the protection of blowers from coming to harm for exposing corruption and corrupt individuals and institutions.

Jega also highlighted lack of clarity in the crafting of the policy, especially with regards to the percentage of the recovered amount to be given out to the blower, absence of any credible update on recoveries occasioned by whistle blowers, how many such blowers were rewarded and how much of the recovered funds were given out as rewards.