The announcement of the lifting of the ban on electoral campaigns by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ordinarily should have signified the commencement of real political activities in the run-up to the 2015 general elections in the country, but the reality of actual campaigns by major stakeholders before this announcement would indicate that this was no more than a perfunctory statement by the electoral commission.INEC had made this particular announcement in line with its electoral timetable and to keep to the provision of the Electoral Act requiring a minimum of 90 days campaign before any election. Presidential and National Assembly election campaigns were to start from November 16, 2014 while governorship and State House of Assembly election campaigns would start on November 30, 2014.In reality, however, political campaigns had started a long time ago for all elective posts, which suggests that INEC was attempting to regulate what could not be regulated. Indeed, it has to be emphasised that repeated announcements by INEC prior to this time that politicians were jumping the gun and embarking on campaigns before the lifting of the ban on it could not make any difference as it was illogical for anybody to attempt to ban campaigns under a democratic system.It should be assumed that the political campaign within the purview of the Electoral Act ought to be the campaign by political parties after electing their candidates at the primaries. In which case, it should be the campaign of political parties' candidates that should go on for a minimum of 90 days in order to sell themselves to the general voters and not the campaigns by individual aspirants to sell themselves to the membership of their parties in order to clinch the parties' tickets. A situation in which INEC would assume that it would regulate how and for how long aspirants campaign to sell themselves to their parties would be a tall order as there are so many methods of doing this outside of the sphere of INEC. We would think that it is also one assignment that is not contemplated within the ambit of democratic politics as it should be left to individuals to determine when they want to indicate their interest in any elective post. In any case, such indication does not affect when the parties would hold their primaries and would not affect the timetable of INEC for the general election.What should be paramount is that political parties provide level playing field for all their aspirants and have transparent structures and processes and schedules for the emergence of their candidates. This way, INEC would be able to concentrate its effort on viable duties that could be carried out satisfactorily and to the benefit of the democratic process and not dissipate energy on unnecessary regulations which do not advance the practice of democracy. What is important is for candidates to have enough time to advertise and sell themselves to the voters in order to empower the voters to be able to make informed decisions on election day of voting and we are of the opinion that the 90-day provision is grossly insufficient, particularly for presidential candidates to go round the whole country. We also believe that the requirement of sufficiently selling candidates to the voting public would not admit of the attempt by INEC to regulate and control all forms of politicking.This is the same attitude we have to the advertised intention of INEC to monitor and regulate campaign funds with the statement that it has 'put structures in place to track expenditure of partisans' and that it would continue to do this. We believe that INEC is just trying to saddle itself with impossible tasks as it could not even enforce the ban on campaigns, yet it is speaking of regulating campaign funds. Will this be about the expenditure of political parties or also include expenditure by individual aspirants' Will the expenditure to be monitored cover contributions and donations by others and personal expenditure by those contributors' Whereas this is a desirable thing, the country would have to get to a situation in which all movements of funds and expenditure could be reasonably tracked before INEC could make any headway in that direction.For now it would be enough for the Commission to concentrate on monitoring political parties and their processes and putting in place the necessary infrastructure for proper voting to take place on election day. It would be an invitation to monumental failure for the Commission to continue to saddle itself with impossible tasks even while not excelling in the viable tasks it has been trying to grapple with for long.
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