Prof. Protus Nathan Uzorma
Money politics is one aspect that is destroying political or electoral trust it has badly crept into the country’s political lexicon, and makes the electoral process compromised, resulting in elections not being free and fair. The Nigerian polity is characterised by this reckless use of money to buy votes and even conscience, and at all levels and stages of electoral politics in Nigeria, the politicians (both the elective office aspirant and their sponsors- Sympathisers, in-groups and godfathers) are ready to channel their financial and material resources to secure electoral victory at the polls or at the tribunals.
My contention here is not that the use of money by political parties or any person or group of persons in politics has inherent corruptive influence. After all, money is needed in electoral politics for mobilisation of political campaigns and rallies, printing of bill boards, posters and manifestoes, production of party emblems and other symbols, print-media advertisement, radio and television announcements and jingles, etc. However, the problem is the noticeable corrupting influence of money and vote-buying as displayed in the present day Nigerian electoral system, which destroys the actual democratic grandstanding of one man one vote.
The dangers of this are many and of ripple effects. One of them is as Milbrath puts it, that because of money-politics and vote-buying, “People of integrity and those who genuinely want to serve the people but have no money to buy votes may lose out in the electoral contest, while bad candidates with abundant financial resources or those with corrupt tendencies may get elected.” Because of this electoral malpractice inherent in money-politics and vote-buying, the favourable electoral results emanating from elections would not represent the true wishes of voters or reflect their actual political preference.
This bane of electoral politics also makes election results have little or nothing to do with the performance in office of the elected office holders or politicians. Precisely because performance according to Lucky Ovwasa, “…is not a critical factor in electoral outcome, and as such, the incentive to perform is very weak. And because vote-buying is very effective in achieving electoral victory, the resort to it is very high”. More so, another negative impact of money politics and vote-buying on free and fair elections and good governance, is that as the winner in the elections takes all while occupying the public office, has sole access to public fund, and thus becomes more prone to corruption.
The Guardian Editorial of July 19, 2006, on this notes that “If the investor with the political investments motives wins and is eventually entrusted with power, it is quite logical for people to assume that the payback is likely to come from public funds.”
Consequent upon the above, elected public office holders who spent huge sums of money to secure victory at the polls would usually have a greater propensity to pursue their private business and financial interest and sometimes those of their corporate sponsors or mentors and financiers, euphemistically referred to in Nigeria as political godfathers.
In this situation, public interest takes the back seat in the calculation, thus degrading the responsibilities of the elected officials to the people. The public fund is thus looted and the dividends of democracy will never come. The masses remain and watch their common wealth swallowed by selected few citizens, and interpreting this to be that only the elected officers eat the national cake, they see election periods as the only time to stuff out of their must-be-selfish politicians, their own part of the national cake before they disappear for the next four years.
Electioneering in Nigeria is capital intensive, and this has led to the emergence of: The godfather phenomenon and political fiancierism or sponsorship, (which practically becomes the proprietor of the state and who blows the piper); of political plinths and cult-personality whereof certain cold wars come that often end up in schisms and inter-party defections, brutish politicking, electoral violence and political assassinations.
Being the sole proprietor or the owner of the Government of the political unit in question (State, Senatorial Zone, Federal Constituency, State Constituency, Local Government Area, Ward, etc), the godfather inter alia rises at will and chooses whoever he or she deems fit for governing the very political unit for his or her proper politico-economic advantage. R.A. Joseph (1987) described this process of using government positions to pursue personal or group interests as prebendalism, a political trait that has ruined every facet and unit of the country’s political vitality.
This spontaneous and individualistic uprising often does not concur with the principle of one man one vote or free and fair election, which proffers universal solution to sustainable democracy, as he or she employs every possible measure in order to assure success in his or her venture.
According to John O Odey, the godfather’s activities frustrate every facet of the socio-political and economic growth and stability of the political unit where he has cultivating interests, and because he holds or knows his whereabouts within the key holders of government positions, whatever he does or engages in is covered, accepted and swallowed even when it is very bitter. The godfathers and elitists materialism are for him mere activities of sycophants, through whose activities peace and order, stability and equity are muzzled before and during elections in the country.
Researchers world over have come to the common opinion that large economic returns are the accoutrement of every political godfather. Thus, Katznelson and Kesselman’s question: Who gives political contributions, has swift response in the Nigerian political language: The accumulative oligarch, the comprador bourgeoisie, the affluent business men that vest their economic might into politics for commercials and deference gratifications.
Money is a political maternal milk; consequently, political funding is bilateral in that both the financier and the sponsored concurrently pursue same political goals, formulate concomitantly same teleological strategies and being divided, each group (of the sponsor and the sponsored) has considerable leverage on the other in a procedural interchange.
This leverage has consequences on the very political unit in question. For instance, when a society that operates a pluralist party system has several candidates featured for elections, the tendency of getting multiplied competitions, which severity proves virility and goes in tandem with the masculine political tonality, the rule of survival of the fittest becomes the acceptable norm and the concepts of equity and justice in power shifts and sharing become nominal, just as the dream of free and fair elections are dashed out.
This is because the plutocracy and oligarchic tendencies turn the political arena into a coterie of financiers who given together become caucuses that determine the course of events within the political unit. This certainly leads to The Devil Theory of power elite dominance of state and local politics and planning to the exclusion of all other special interest groups, which is absurd in modern democracies as practised in Europe and America, and now envisioned in most developing countries, notably our country Nigeria.