A few months after announcing the deregistration of 74 political parties in Nigeria, the country’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has come forward to announce that over 60 per cent of the active political parties in Nigeria are yet to file their statutory returns in line with the country’s Electoral Act.
In an interview with The Guardian, the INEC Director of Publicity and Voter Education, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, revealed that just over a third of the parties that participated in the 2019 general elections actually complied with the law by filing their statutory returns, which include their annual statements of assets, liabilities and analysis of their sources of funds.
This rule, which can be found in Section 86 of the Electoral Act (as amended), empowers the election umpire to monitor and record activities of registered political parties in the country, while Section 92(3) of the same law also mandates political parties to fulfil their own side of the bargain by submitting their election expenses to the Commission in a separate audited return within six months after the elections have taken place.
To this end, the law places a penalty of N1million maximum fine on any political party that flouts the laws mentioned in the above section and further says the court may impose a penalty of 200,000 per day in case of failure to submit an accurately audited return with the stipulated period until it is submitted to the Commission.
Another major issue the Commission brought up involves what it describes as a violation of campaign finance laws by several political parties in Nigeria that were known to spend above the stipulated amount for campaigning as stated in the Electoral Act.
However, as INEC defines election expenses as “expenses incurred by a political party within the period from the date notice is given by the commission to conduct an election up to and including the polling day in respect of a particular election,” pertinent questions surrounding campaign funds spent before an election date is officially announced by the Commission remain unanswered and pose a loophole in the law.
On the way forward for Nigeria, the Commission noted that several workshops had been undertaken to enlighten parties on the importance of financial recording and reporting, proper bookkeeping among other pertinent bits.
Osaze-Uzzi also revealed that the Commission was actively educating its staff on how to undertake proper monitoring of financial activities carried out by political parties.
This story is part of our new series on Nigeria where we analyse electoral reform in the country ahead of the next general elections in 2023.
