Elections, Cash Shortage, And Money Politics, By Kazeem Akintunde
On Saturday, about 93.5 million Nigerians are expected to cast their votes to elect a new president for the country. The lucky man out of the 18 on the ballot will preside over the destiny of over 200 million Nigerians. Going by the 1999 constitution that we are presently operating, the lucky person must have secured the highest number of votes cast at the election, and not less than a quarter of the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. Section 134 of the constitution is quite explicit on that.
On the same date, as we are casting our ballots for the would-be president, we are also expected to decide who would represent us at the National Assembly. There are 109 senatorial seats up for grabs while in the House of Representatives, we must elect new or return old members whose total should be 360.
Elections of state governors in 31 states as well as voting for those that will represent us at the State Houses of Assembly will be held weeks later.
This year’s elections will go down in the history of the country as among the most acrimonious and contentious. The gloves are off and the major combatants in the polls are no longer hiding behind a finger to attack their perceived opponents. Issues such as the Muslim-Muslim ticket, ethnicity, tribal sentiment, and the influence of money in politics are some of the problems bedeviling our politics in Nigeria and they have not disappeared as we prepare for the 2023 general elections. But rather than finding lasting solutions to those issues, we have continued to stoke the fire of the crisis and they have now grown to full cancer, threatening our democratic space.
President Muhammadu Buhari is, however, interested in finding a lasting solution to one of the issues – the influence of money on our politics. He has, on several occasions promised to bequeath free and fair democratic culture on the land, and in going about that, he took a bold decision a few months before the general elections to redesign our currency, the naira. He has told us that the redesign of the naira should have been done long ago and that it is better late than never. He and his appointee at the helm of affairs in the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, gave Nigerians up till January 31st to swap old N200, N500, and N1,000 naira notes for new ones as they would cease to be legal tender in the country after that date.
Many Nigerians keyed into the idea but there was a major problem. The new notes were nowhere to be found. Nigerians who took their old currencies to the banks also came back home with the same old notes after making withdrawals through ATM machines. That was the first signal that all may not be well with the implementation of the policy. Indeed, the CBN later confirmed that it succeeded in mopping up over N2 trillion naira from the system but that less than N500 billion of new notes were printed as replacement. In economics, the forces of demand and supply will come into play.
Powerful Nigerians and smart Bank managers created an avenue to make more money by hoarding the new notes thereby creating panic and tension in the land. Even when the deadline was extended by Buhari, the new notes still remained scarce commodities. Old notes had been mopped up and could no longer be spent in the country and Nigerians could not access new notes despite having thousands in their accounts. Currency swap became currency confiscation.
President Buhari, who gave approval to Emefiele to embark on the policy has said that it would prevent vote-buying. Now, members of his own political party, the All Progressive Congress, APC, are kicking against it. They have told him in plain language that votes were bought and money changed hands before he was elected president in 2015 after failing on three different occasions.
Femi Gbajabiamila, speaker of the House of Representatives, Abdullahi Ganduje, Governor of Kano State, and Nasir Ahmed El-rufai, the governor of Kaduna state are now poking fingers into Buhari’s eyes. The trio are known supporters of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the APC, the same party that gave victory to Buhari in 2015 and a second term in 2019. They have separately accused Buhari of trying to subvert democracy after the Supreme Court ruled recently that the old notes should remain legal tender in the country pending the determination of a suit filed by some state governors against Buhari and the federal government on the issue.
Indirectly, Buhari has been told that a huge ‘war chest’ brought him to office in 2015. Indeed, Tinubu actually reminded Buhari that it was he that gave him the presidency in 2015 after Luleing on three different occasions. (Apologies to Dr. Ruben Abati).
In 2015, the bulk of the funds used in prosecuting the elections that got Buhari elected came from Lagos and Rivers States. Raji Fashola, the then governor of Lagos State, and Rotimi Amaechi, in charge of Rivers state, ensured that money was not an issue at the APC primary held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos. The entire operation was coordinated by Tinubu. With Atiku Abubakar as a formidable opponent to Buhari for the APC ticket, Tinubu, ensured that delegates were handsomely taken care of in dollars, and the rest as they say, is history.
It was the same scenario during the main election as they succeeded in removing from power, an incumbent president, albeit with the aid of money and a high dose of propaganda. The duo of Fashola and Amaechi were handsomely rewarded but Tinubu set his eyes on the number one job, hoping that he would automatically take over from Buhari in 2023. In fact, there was a gentleman agreement that he would succeed Buhari, after all, there is honour among thieves. That was what gave birth to Tinubu’s Emilokan rhetoric during a campaign rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
But Buhari, now a ‘complete gentle man’ felt there is a need to clean up the electoral space and remove the influence of money from the system, hence the naira redesign policy which has now pitched his party members against him. Both El-rufai and Ganduje have insisted that the old naira notes remain legal tender in their respective states and have vowed to deal with any individual or corporate body that turns down the notes.
While Buhari addressed the nation last week to declare that only the N200 should be re-introduce into the system to ease the pressure on suffering Nigerians, El-Rufai also addressed residents of Kaduna and insisted that the old N500 and N1000 still remain legal tender in the state, a clear case of confusion and anarchy. Now, 10 state governors have returned to the Supreme Court seeking for a declaration that Buhari’s directive during his last national broadcast was illegal and unconstitutional. All 10 governors are members of the same ruling APC. Wonderful.
Although the CBN created a window where Nigerians with old notes were directed to take such notes to the CBN offices in their respective states, they were overwhelmed by the crowd at its Lagos and Ogun State offices and were forced to direct commercial banks to once again accept the old notes but should not issue it out again. A counter directive was however issued few hours later. Riots have broken out in several parts of Nigeria while a few commercial banks have been attacked and their offices vandalized.
While I do not have any issue with the naira redesign policy, it is the suffering and hardship many Nigerians have been subjected to in the last few weeks that keeps me up at night. There is no way that you will withdraw N2 trillion from a system and return just N400 billion and not expect it to create anarchy. Many Nigerians have lost their lives due to the needless hardship the poor masses are going through as a result of the poor implementation of this policy. The rich politicians whom the measures are targeted against have their ways of getting cash from Bank Managers who are at their beck and call.
There has to be better ways on how to go about cleaning up our political space. We need to completely overhaul it and tinker with our leadership recruitment process if we are to get it right as a nation. Drug lords, 419 kingpins, and fraudsters have dominated the political space because they have enough money to buy their way into power. But it is the common man that suffers the backlash of control policies such as these. How many Nigerians can afford N50 million to buy forms to contest for political offices in Nigeria?
Politicians invest huge sums of money to get into offices and recouping their funds thereafter becomes the main priority. Winning the next election becomes their only target and they steal a humongous amount of our commonwealth to campaign for the next poll. That is what Buhari and Emefiele are now trying to prevent but they are treating an ailment without first dealing with the symptoms. Now, the rich politicians are fighting back, leaving the resultant negative effects squarely on the masses. We are in the night of long knives.
Again, it is clear to political observers that the president’s soul is not fully in the Tinubu project. He tried to stop him during the APC primary but Asiwaju was smarter than him and pulled the rug from under his feet in Abeokuta, Ogun State. With the party’s ticket in his kitty, Tinubu has embarked on a nationwide campaign but the President has not been fully committed to the campaign and has been on several occasions quoted telling Nigerians to vote for a candidate of their choice, adding that their votes would count. Speaking like a statesman instead of a party man that should be at the forefront of campaigning for his party’s candidate.
While opposing political parties are rejoicing that the naira redesign policy would prevent the influence of money in our polity, many in the APC are crying that the president is out to stop Tinubu from clinching the presidency in Saturday’s election and are fighting back.
For now, the agenda to stop Tinubu at all costs is on. Whether he will lose the election remains to be seen. One thing that is certain however is that APC is about to witness an implosion and the outcome of Saturday’s election will determine the direction the party will take in the next few days.
Please stay safe as you go about casting your votes on Saturday, and may the best man or woman win for the good of the common suffering Nigerian.
See you next week.
