The All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and Labour Party (LP) and other political parties to appear on the 2023 general elections’ ballot have been reminded about limitations to how they can raise finances for their various campaigns.
News 360 info recalls that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had earlier scheduled September 28th 2022 for political parties to commence their campaigns in public, this is as provided by Sec. 94(1) of the Electoral Act 2022.
The electoral events subsequently commenced as scheduled. However, INEC in a bid to curtail excesses and violations by political parties, said that all registered political parties must make public the sources of their campaign funds and keep to the rules guiding campaign financing and spending limits.
Speaking during an interview with Trust TV, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said there are limits to what individuals can contribute to campaign financing in Nigeria.
According to him, individuals can only make contributions subject to certain limits. “The party also has its limitations as to what it can spend including where the money is coming from and the responsibility for full disclosure for transparency. The limits are in the law.
“These are in the law and they must be obeyed and respected,” Yakubu said.
Yakubu maintained that parties cannot receive financial contributions from abroad, noting that if there is any fund received by any party from outside the country, such funds must be transferred to the commission.
Speaking about the security of the commission’s online and electronics systems, Yakubu assured that his commission would invest heavily in cybersecurity, adding that “Any organisation that operates an online platform is susceptible to hacking but our defence system is very robust. But I am sure you don’t expect me on national and international television to say exactly how we are going to defend our system but we are satisfied that our defence system is robust.”
Commenting on the issues of double registrations during the recently concluded Continuous Voter Registrations (CVR), Yakubu said that the commission after every registration cleans up the data and that in cleaning up the data, it removes those who are not eligible to be registered under the law.
He said: “Nigerians are not allowed to register more than once, so those who are engaged in multiple registrations we removed their data, so that was what we did. But the law requires also that once we do so, we should also throw the register open to Nigerians for claims and objections by citizens.
And the law specifically requires the commission to publish the hard copies of the register in all the 8,809 wards nationwide, as well as 774 local government areas. Now the idea is for citizens to help INEC to further clean-up up the register.
So, there will be two stages, we are about to complete the cleaning up of new registrants, we will add the data of fresh registrants that are eligible or valid to the existing register of 84m and then publish the entire register nationwide for citizens to help us clean it up further.”
It has been reported that former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is holding the presidential ticket for APC, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for PDP, former Governor of Anambra State is for the Labour Party while former Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is the flagbearer for the NNPP in the 2023 presidential election.
