Civic Group Rejects N10 Billion Presidential Campaign Cap as Unjustified and Corruptive
A prominent civil society organisation has condemned the newly approved N10 billion spending limit for presidential election campaigns, arguing it is statistically arbitrary and creates a dangerous avenue for corruption.
Bukola Idowu, Executive Director of the Kimpact Development Initiative, stated that the figure, set by the National Assembly’s amendment to the 2022 Electoral Act, defies logical and factual scrutiny. His core criticism centres on the absence of verifiable data used to determine the uniform caps for all candidates, regardless of the vast differences in Nigeria’s electoral landscapes.
“The question we keep asking them… is that their decision is not being backed by fact, statistics or data,” Idowu said in an interview on Arise News. He challenged the logic of a fixed N3 billion limit for all governorship candidates. He noted that campaigning across Kano’s 44 local government areas would require vastly different resources compared to Bayelsa’s eight, yet the law allocates the same amount. This inconsistency, he argued, makes the subsequent jump to a N10 billion presidential cap even more untenable.
“So how did you arrive at 10 billion for the President?” he asked rhetorically. “So it doesn’t really make any statistical sense.”
Idowu further underscored his point by juxtaposing the campaign finance limit with public office remuneration. He noted that a president’s total salary over a full four-year term does not approach the N10 billion threshold, making the expenditure ceiling appear disproportionate and disconnected from standard measures of public service compensation.
The National Assembly had increased the previous spending thresholds, citing inflationary pressures on the economy. However, Idowu asserted that lawmakers have been presented repeatedly with his organisation’s analyses but have proceeded without addressing the foundational flaws in their methodology.
By establishing these high, uniform financial benchmarks, Idowu contends that the legislature has effectively commodified elections, favouring wealthy candidates and increasing the risk of illicit funding influences. He maintains that without a transparent, data-driven rationale, the new limits serve more as a recipe for corruption than a framework for fair competition, undermining the integrity of the electoral process.
