 Indications have emerged that the refusal of political parties to submit to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, their annual financial statements as required by the Constitution and the Electoral Act has prevented the Commission from monitoring their finances and publishing the same as mandated by the Constitution. INEC has confirmed that it audited the accounts of the parties up to 2016 and had gone far under 2017 and 2018 accounts whilst awaiting the remaining years. INEC Chairman Professor Makudya Kubu said at a meeting with chairman of political parties in March 2021 that only one political party complied with a constitutional provision warning that their refusal to comply was in contravention of the law. Section 86 of the Electoral Act mandates that every political party must submit its detailed annual statement of account to the Commission. While joining us to discuss this is Bola Hon, a Lodger Dehees, an economist, and Paul James is the program manager of elections for Yaga Africa. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Gentlemen, can you hear me? Yeah, thank you for the evening. Okay, great. Thank you for joining us. I'm going to start with you, Bola Hon. The major question that everybody is asking is that these political parties constantly know that what is expected of them legally in terms of making these reports, their financial reports known to not just INEC but making it plain so that people can actually say, well, you're doing the right thing or not. I remember sometime in 2014, CERAP actually petitioned the political parties, especially the APC and the PDP, to make their accounts public so that people can tell if they were going above the spending. But we're in 2022 and that still has not been done. What do you think is responsible for the foot dragging? Well, I think what is the punishment for not doing it? One million Naira fine. So who cares about a million Naira fine? That's what the law says. The official or a political party that fails to obey that section of the Electoral Act should be liable to a million Naira fine. Is that punitive enough? Is that something that could push a political party to want to obey? I don't think so. And I'm surprised as to why this has to remain the punishment for non-compliance because it's actually a very fundamental issue to know who is donating money, big money to political parties, and how the money is being spent. The accountability, the asset and liability and expenses of the parties must be known. And not to make public to Nigeria. This thing is actually meant to be published in two news papers. But if the information are not there, the audit is not being concluded. What will INEC have to publish? And if the political parties don't comply, what is the punishment? The officer or the political party that is not complied will pay a one million fine or six months jail. I don't think that that is enough to push the political parties to comply. So there needs to be more deterrence. But let me move to Paul. Paul, let's talk about election expenditure and third party spending. We know, and you and I know, that putting parties in check even becomes dire when it's full-fleshed campaign season. We see that, you know, a lot of people will say, well, this person has sponsored, this person is sponsoring. These people are giving us money to do this. And it has far-reaching effects. Could this also be part of the problems that INEC is grappling with? And what could be the way to deal better with this, you know, issues? Like Malahoa said, one million narrows chicken change for these political parties or these politicians to slap on the wrist. But then maybe if the jail term could be put over that, maybe that would be enough deterrence. What do you think? Well, I think first I would like us to start explaining even the political party systems we have, the political party structures we have in the country. Often times, you see immediately after the election, INEC will go by registering parties that didn't perform well in an election. We saw a case, for instance, the 2019 election, where well over 60 parties were registered at the end of the election. And so for a few that are also remaining, sometimes reorganizing or restructuring these parties also take a little time. For instance, most of these parties are just concluding their Congresses or even election of their officials. I mean, that happens just at the same time. And even on the part of INEC, sometimes I feel like there is complaisance, especially from the department in INEC that is supposed to be responsible for tracking the espaces of the political parties and even the activities of the political parties. I mean, the Electoral Party monitoring department in INEC. So I feel those are the places to start the conversation from first to look at the political party structure and also even on the part of INEC. There have been a lot of contravention of this law. This does not even start now. I like the fact that you are way back as far as even 2014, 2015 to see. And then like the other, my co-panelists had also mentioned, the challenge also of sanction is still there. But then the biggest thing is also about the inability of the agencies of government, of the structures in place, even try political parties spending. This is a country where we have seen individuals donating as much as 100 million to political parties where the law is clear about what an individual can spend, what parties can spend. It is difficult to track some of these sort of donations that come to political parties. Now, we will have a bigger challenge ahead of us for the coming election. The new electorate is saying the parties can spend up to about five billion error or five billion error for the presidential contest. These expenses have started already with the purchase of funds. These expenses have started with the administrative fees that people are paying. These expenses have started with even money that pull out into the state secretary. We are striking them. At what point will INEC begin to strike even if political parties are failing? For the few that INEC have trapped, INEC can even come probably to begin to tell that they probably want the parties are there. Maybe that will spoil the parties to do the needful, that will spoil the parties to do what is expected of them. Well, I want to take it up from where Paul has stopped. Let me paint a picture. For example, the monies that politicians spend under the table, I mean, they run into billions. Just as he said, some parties you have to pay 100 million to pick a ticket, a nomination form in the first instance. And this is not the monies that you're going to spend campaigning. That's just an aside. And the Electoral Act actually is against all of this, like he has also said. But then you spoke about the deterrents in my mind. I'm still tinkering on it. The fact that INEC has not really necessarily made moves to start striking like Paul has said, and the fact that this might continue to happen because it's a vicious cycle, does that not boil down to the lawlessness that we have in the country in general? I'm talking about the fact that Nigeria has so many laws that addresses almost everything, but we never really get to see the enforcement of these laws. So why are we even having this conversation in the first place? OK, I'm going to also speak from the perspective of a noditor. The earliest job I did in my life was as a noditor. I'm a chartered accountant. Most of the money that moves around within the political circles happens in cash. The problem with cash is stressability. Where is the track of money that is being spent in cash? So I need to pay for a service and I pay in cash. Somebody is donating to me and instead of transferring money or using a cheque, decided to give me some cash in dollars. How do you account for that? How do you track that? What will a noditor see that will help him to unravel that situation? So part of the problem we have is how the spending has been. How do I put it now? Substantially in cash. Go ask anybody who has been to all those dedicated spending areas. All those things are in cash. They come with Naira in cash, they come with dollars. Well, do you think that this is actually deliberate? This is a strategy that is being employed by these politicians and the parties to evade some of these policies that are within the electoral acts. The fact that it might one way or the other catch up with them. And so this might be a way of evading all of that. Definitely. It's part of the game. You leave all those money that will make you break the rule. You keep them totally off the books. They won't be by transport. They will be by currency. Cash. So it is left for you to know how you want to capture that. Or you capture it totally off the books of the organization. Now, INEC and the Electoral Act is aware of this possibility. So there is also a part where it mentioned an accountant who helps political parties to cook books. And he has a sanction for that accountant. Having said that, the way we use cash in our electoral process makes it easy for political parties to beat the rules. They will declare what they want to declare. They will pass through the system, what they want to pass through the system and they will leave the rest completely out of the books. Let's talk about the campaign finance law. I'm bringing back to you Paul. Do we think that the political parties understand the campaign finance law for them to be totally in adherence? Again, if we have had issues like this dating back to 2014 and it's left, I mean kudos to people like Sarah. Sarah has continuously put government on their toes in terms of accountability. Whether they've made a leeway or not is another conversation for another day. But has it not come to a point where maybe these acts or these parts of the electoral finance law needs to be amended so much so that there will be stiffer sanctions? Because I mean, if we keep complaining about these issues year in year out, and then we still have the same conversations and we say, well, we know this and that, but they're not doing this. We're waiting on how much longer can we get go around in these circles? Again, we're looking at trust here. We're looking at people who we want to bring into power to lead us, people who we can trust with our monies with the future of our country. If we cannot trust them at the point where they're trying to pick who runs on the platform of these parties and we cannot trust them in terms of running their own finances, how can we trust them with the offices that we're giving to them? I like the point you're making about trust here, and especially because it has become a very expensive commodity in our electoral democracy. If it is not for the question of trust, politicians will have the vice under that means of engaging with the voters, of buying of the voters. Because of the lack of trust, that is where you are seeing the exchange of cash as a transaction, I mean, in the old transaction chain. But then again, the laws are there, like we know. But it is because, of course, people have fine order means of breaking the laws. For instance, cash for vote. I give you an instance. You go back to the election in 2018. It's as simple as one party is giving them 4,000, another party is giving voters 5,000. And you can trace these forms. Sometimes even back to the government, sometimes to some individuals that have penetrated the government. It's not like we don't know this thing. Is it political with the determination to do that, that is like him. But then what is the point going forward? I think for me is to begin to talk about a whole reform, a complete structural reform, especially finance reforms in our own elections. We should begin to see how we would be emphasized the impact of money in our election and encourage other means of bringing up legitimate candidates in our own election. I think that is for me where to start from. For instance, if the issue of a 100 million become a permanent feature in our democracy, I bet you by the time you come to the next cycle of election, these resources would double. And then if you look at the ripple effect on other aspects of the economy, and then also the gap that will continue to exist between the half and the half nots, it brings up also challenge, especially in the leadership recruitment process. So this is a whole chain that needs to be addressed. But I feel the first to do is to begin to talk about what sort of financial, what sort of reforms we want to see in our own finance. I agree for instance, a million nerf of violating this law I think is, for me, ridiculous. We need to see a review done to this to see how we can increase this. Perhaps that would help to sanitize the process. It is one way to go. But most importantly, also a mindset reorientation in all of these things. Parties not need to be told for instance to, I mean, anybody that will want to work with a party or vote for a party, we want to do that based on the part that they can trust the party, like you said, that the party is opening its book, that the party is open to be improved even by the public. So I mean, let's just start from there. We don't even need INF to shout on the party or the public to shout on the party. A party that is really open, that is futuristic and also is people oriented, should begin to even open its book even before, even without INF or even the public access. I think for me, those are the kind of reorientation of mindset reorientation we want to start seeing in our own elections. Okay, and finally, as a money man, we're pushing for all kinds of electoral reforms as Paul has said, but then we forget the very, the most important which is the money. And he's also talked about the rippling effect of these increase in monies for nomination forms and campaign monies. So there's a mopping up of cash which affects the average person out there. And maybe we don't really realize the effect it's having on us. So what do we do aside from just calling for these reforms? How does the common person get involved? Again, I want to go through the political party membership aspect. The average person who holds whether it PDP, APT, SDP, APGA, what do you call it, ID, membership card, does that person count? Does that person's voice count, apart from the money bags within the party? Maybe if that is also included in the reforms, maybe the opening of books would be easily done. I'm just wondering. Okay, that's a whole lot. The journey to where you foresee is gonna take us a while. That is because the attitude of the politicians, and don't forget that the politicians are not outside of the decision makers themselves. So at the state level, when we're speaking of the politicians, we're talking about the governor who is the boss at the state level. At the federal level, we are talking about the president. So these same people are decision makers. At the same time, they are politicians. The same with the lawmakers. The lawmakers are politicians and they're also the ones that are making the laws. So for us as citizens and for civil liberties organizations and other stakeholders, we need to get more involved. See, in reality, the kind of democracy that we have adopted, which is more or less like the American bicamera model is an expensive model, very expensive. In America, for example, I remember Obama raised an equivalent of over 400 billionaires to prosecute the election in his first election in America as president. So here is the difference. The difference is that America follows the money. We know exactly who are the people that donated this money. And the base of donation is wider. In Nigeria, only very few people make that money available and that affect the independence of those parties. Those money bags can actually exercise very strong influence on what happens within the party. It's slightly different from where the money source is wider. Okay. Well, I want to say thank you. Unfortunately, our time is fast-spent. Bola hon, Oluja Day is an economist and of course Paul James is of Yaga Africa. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being part of the conversation. We hope to have more of these in the future. Thanks for having me. All right. Well, we've come to the end of the show tonight. I want to thank you all for staying with us and plus politics returns tomorrow, same time, 7 p.m., on your number one station. I'm Mary Annico and I'll see you tomorrow as we continuously talk for development. Have a good evening.