Eight months to the officially allotted time for the commencement of campaigns, APC and PDP are already doing so under different guises writes Senior Correspondent, Ishaya Ibrahim
Going by the 2010 Electoral Act, campaigns for the 2015 general elections are expected to begin in eight months’ time. But the two major political parties in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), seem to be running foul of the law in clever ways.
Prof Attahiru-JegaSection 99 of the Electoral Act stipulates: “For the purpose of this Act, the period of campaigning in public by every political party shall commence 90 days before polling day and shall end 24 hours prior to that day.”
But while the parties engage in what have all the trappings of campaigns, they simply call them rallies.
So, notwithstanding the provision that forbids campaigning until 90 days to election, the polity is already agog with all kinds electioneering. For instance, the APC, in a well-attended and publicised event on March 7, 2014 in Abuja, reeled out what it said was the party’s roadmap, detailing what Nigerians stood to benefit from voting for it in 2015. It later followed it up by sending unsolicited text messages to Nigerians, highlighting some of its campaign promises which included free health care and education, monthly stipend of N5,000 to the elderly among other political goodies.
Like the APC, the PDP has embarked on even more elaborate show ahead of the 2015 general election to woo voters to its side. Leading the campaign team for the PDP is President Goodluck Jonathan, who, with a retinue of PDP chieftains, has been touring the country in what the party cleverly termed ‘Unity Rally’. And in all the rallies which have so far held in Kwara, Niger and Kaduna states, the President showed off PDP’s winning edge.
For instance, in the Kaduna rally, Jonathan said the gang-up against the PDP by the opposition parties would fail and that the party would have more states than the APC after the 2015 elections.
He had said: “We have been told that some people are ganging up in some different names. I can assure you, don’t be bothered about any gang-up. This is not the first time that there has been a gang-up. From 1999, there was a gang-up. Two, three political parties came together; they brought Presidential candidate from one of the parties and Vice Presidential candidate from one other party. The gang-up failed.”
While INEC has conceded that some of the political parties are in breach of the Electoral Act by engaging in early campaigns, its Chairman, Attahiru Jega, seems to be playing safe by refusing to name the offenders and their particular offence, like in the case of the PDP and APC that have held rallies where their manifestoes were freely publicised in the print and broadcast media.
Rather, Jega simply said: “Anybody that comes out now to say ‘vote for me in 2015’ is breaching the electoral laws. You can hold a rally as a party, but you don’t turn it into a campaign.”
But what really constitutes political campaign? Kayode Idowu, in an interview, avoided the question when this reporter once asked him. He had rather said: “Everybody knows what a campaign is. You don’t expect me to define what constitutes a campaign. What we have done in our statement is to call the attention of players to the fact that campaigning at this time is out of the legal framework.”
Author and public affairs analyst, Ogubundu Nwadike, attempted to draw a line between campaigning and rally. He said: “Campaign under the circumstance requires designated candidates whose specific desires to win election are deliberately the issues for the gathering. On the other hand, rally is a wider party affair which usually is designated to, but not limited to, receiving new members into a party. Both provides occasions for showmanship. Hence, it’s possible to confuse both.”
For chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja branch, Monday Ubani, campaign for 2015 general election has since begun. “The President in one of his rallies said he was not there to campaign. But the idea of going to Kaduna,Kwara, Enugu, all over the place is campaign. APC is also campaigning. All this their (APC) roadmap and going to receive defectors are all campaign.”
The NBA chief also said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lacked the capacity to sanction offenders.
“When you don’t have a strong political umpire, an umpire that can give clear guideline as to what rally should be and what campaign is, it brings confusion into the system,” he said.
Dr.Tunde Oseni, lecturer, Department of Politics and International Relations, Lead City University, Ibadan, agreed with Ubani. “Basically what is going on is a subtle kind of campaign. You know politicians and political parties have a way of playing around laws, rules and regulations. They are calling them rallies. They are not calling them campaigns. Of course, the line between a political campaign and rally is very thin. What happens is, part of the basic functions of political parties is to enlighten the public about its programmes.So, there is a correlation between what is currently going on and what they are expected to do according to the law. And because politicians are political animals, as Aristotle put it, they cannot but start some kind of subtle campaign now. It is a campaign in the guise of a rally,” he said.
Oseni also added that though what the politicians were doing amounted to campaigns, they were not necessarily breaching the Electoral Act. “The way you choose your words matters, particularly in politics. You know the case of President Jonathan who said he suspended the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) whereas what he did was firing him. But to play around a clause in the CBN Act that said he cannot unilaterally remove the CBN governor, he said he suspended him. The same thing is happening now. Politicians are just using the word rally.”
But when asked whether Section 99 of the Electoral Act be repealed, since it appears difficult to implement, Oseni said: “Law is made for man and not man for law. The law should not be repealed; it should be there. If not for the law, these rallies would have gotten to a level that you would think election is tomorrow. So it shouldn’t be repealed because it regulates and checkmates the activities of politicians.”