By Omoniyi Salaudeen
BY both comparative advantage and conventional party politics, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is supposed to be the most buoyant of all political parties in Nigeria. One, by virtue of its control of power at the centre, APC stands at a more vantage position than other parties in terms of access to resources. Again, it controls majority of elected representatives at the local, state and national levels, including having 23 state governors in its fold. Also, as people like to put their money where their mouth is, political patronage in form of corporate gifts and donations in exchange for contracts has always been a good source of funding for a ruling party.
But this may not necessarily be so for the APC with its change mantra. Unlike the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which had enormous resources to flaunt around while it held sway at the centre, APC is as much financially distressed as other parties in the country, Sunday Sun has reliably learnt.
According to a close source to the national secretariat who spoke with Sunday Sun on condition of anonymity, APC is not in any way immune from the current financial hardship facing the Nigerian economy contrary to the general impression in the public. Due to the present economic recession, he said, the party is having a difficult time managing its affairs both at the state and national levels. President Muhammadu Buhari’s seeming obsession with anti-corruption war is said to be partly responsible for the financial crisis the leadership has had to grapple with since the new administration came into power on May 29 last year.
By conventional practice in Nigeria’s evolving multi-party democracy, huge sums of money is needed by parties to provide offices, equipment, staffing, campaign for political offices, congresses, conventions as well as litigation fees, among other electoral processes. This makes it imperative for political parties to go out of their way to source for funds through such means as members’ subscription, subventions, donations, gifts and grants by individuals as authorized by law.
However, the disposition of the Buhari-led administration to sleazy source of funding is said to have put the APC in a big dilemma. Sunday Sun gathered that some of the party’s stalwarts recently provoked President Buhari’s icy distemper when they approached him for approval of an arrangement that would mandate contractors to give their widow’s might to the national secretariat of the party to augment its already depleted treasury. “I must be honest with you; all is not well within the APC. Even as a ruling party, we find it difficult to maintain the necessary structure that can sustain our presence at all levels. Ordinarily, we are not supposed to be starving for fund since we control majority of elected representatives at local, state and national levels. But as you know, these are hard times for the state governors. Many of them cannot pay salaries of workers. They owe backlog of salaries. So, the subventions that are expected to come from the states as a source of funding to sustain the party’s structure are not forthcoming. And regrettably, President Buhari’s hard line position on corruption is not helping matters. Not too long ago, some concerned stakeholders approached the president to find an alternative source of funding. The idea was to encourage contractors to pay some certain percentage of their profit to the national secretariat of the party. But President Buhari was so livid with anger that he sent them out of his office. That is why there is peace of the graveyard in the party now. Nobody is ready to rock the boat again,” he told Sunday Sun.
Lack of adequate resources for effective mobilization is said to be accountable for the woeful performance of APC in the recent rerun elections in some states. Before the rerun elections, many people had expected that the party would make a good showing in Cross River, Bayelsa and Rivers states. But many of its candidates lost out to their PDP counterparts.
There are palpable fears that the trend may mar the future of the APC, if the issue of funding is not appropriately addressed in time. “You know in an electoral contest, preparation for another election starts almost immediately soon as one ends. Compared to other climes, electoral contest is still a very expensive venture in our present democracy. And that is why some of us are worried that something urgent needs to be done to overcome the financial limitation facing the party before we go into another major election,” the source added.
Already, Edo and Ondo state governorship elections have been scheduled by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to hold in September and November this year respectively. These two elections are critical and strategic for both the APC and PDP. For the PDP, which has been grandstanding, boasting that it would reclaim power at the centre in 2019, the poll is certainly going to be a litmus test for the strength of its supporters in the two states. In the same way, the APC would need to prove that it is still a popular party to beat in 2019 and beyond.
President Buhari is wary of what could be the implication of pursuing party financing in the way of the immediate past administration of the PDP on his anti-corruption crusade. While the PDP held sway at the centre, the constitution of the party allowed elected and appointed public officers at all levels such as ministers, commissioners, special advisers, ambassadors, and board chairmen at federal level, among others, to contribute five percent of their basic annual salary to fund the party.
Apart from that, individuals and corporate organizations also made handsome contributions to the party during major elections. For instance, a group of business people under the aegis of Corporate Nigeria contributed over N2 billion to the campaign funds of President Olusegun Obasanjo in contravention of Section 38 Subsections 2 of the Companies and Allied Matters Act which prohibits corporate bodies from making contributions to political parties. The Act specifically in Section 38 says: “A company shall not have or exercise power either directly or indirectly to make a donation or gift of any of its property or funds to a political party or political association, or for any political purpose and if any company, in breach of this subsection makes any donation or gift of its property to a political party or political association or for any political purpose; the officers in default and any member who voted for the breach shall be jointly and severally liable to refund to the company the sum or value of the donation or gift and in addition , the company and every such officer or member shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine equal to the amount or value of the donation or gift.”
Sources told Sunday Sun that President Buhari is strongly against such a sleazy source of funding, making reference to an episode that played out in his first military regime in 1984 when the civilian governor of the defunct Bendel State, Ambrose Alli, was jailed for 100 years for donating the sum of N983, 000 meant for a road project to his Party by the military tribunal set up to try corrupt public officials.
Ahead of Edo and Ondo election, Sunday Sun learnt, some concerned stakeholders have been holding nocturnal meeting to find a way out of the quagmire to avoid a disgraceful outing. In the same way, they are also said to be making frantic effort to curtail the looming implosion that may likely arise from the crisis of confidence among the various cleavages that coagulated to form the APC.