A concerned group, Alaigbo Political Watchdog, has lamented about Nigeria’s costly election cycles, describing them as periods of fiscal hemorrhage.
In a statement signed by the spokesperson, Prince Ben Ahanonu, the group said, “Every election cycle in Nigeria has increasingly become a period of fiscal hemorrhage, where the pursuit of political power often takes precedence over public welfare. This shift creates a staggering opportunity cost, where billions of Naira originally intended for essential social services are diverted to fund high-stakes campaigns.”
The Rising Cost of Democracy
It is true that Nigeria conducts some of the most expensive elections in Africa. For instance, the budget for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ballooned from ₦355 billion in 2023 to a projected ₦1.043 trillion for the 2026–2027 cycle.
Beyond official budgets, the Electoral Act 2026 sensationally increased spending limits for candidates by up to 400%, allowing presidential candidates to spend as much as ₦10 billion.
Diversion of Funds and Opportunity Costs
The opportunity cost refers to the public benefits lost when funds are redirected. In Nigeria, this manifests in several critical ways:
Infrastructure Decay: Public treasury funds are often diverted through unauthorised channelling to controlled companies to fund campaigns, leaving roads, bridges, and power projects abandoned.
Healthcare and Education Crisis: As money flows into rallies and advertisements, public hospitals face chronic shortages of equipment and unpaid workers, while the education sector struggles with low budget allocations that fall far below international standards.
Politicization of Social Welfare: Initiatives like N-Power and school feeding programmes are sometimes manipulated to serve as patronage tools to buy loyalty rather than alleviate poverty.
Consequences on the Nigerian Masses
Economic Instability: Massive injections of cash during campaigns trigger economic shocks, driving up inflation and weakening the Naira, which directly reduces the purchasing power of ordinary citizens.
The Recoupment Cycle: Since the cost of winning office often exceeds the official salary of the position, elected officials typically spend their tenure refunding their campaign sponsors (godfathers) using constituency funds, further stalling local development.
Political Inequality: The high financial barrier for entry marginalizes youth, women, and persons with disabilities, ensuring that only the extremely wealthy or those with elite backing can participate in governance.
Erosion of Trust: When voters see billions spent on elections while basic amenities remain absent, it fuels political apathy and a “transactional” voting culture, where citizens feel justified in selling their votes for immediate survival.
Ultimately, the diversion of resources for elections creates a vicious cycle where governance is treated as a business investment rather than a public service, leaving the Nigerian masses to pay the price in the form of crumbling infrastructure and a fragile economy.
Without doubt, the staggering cost of elections creates a massive opportunity cost for social sectors that are perpetually underfunded:
Lowering the cost of governance is not just about spending less; it is about changing how Nigeria manages its democracy:
In the light of the foregoing, AlaIgbo Political Watchdog demands the following Structural Reforms to Lower Costs:
1. Conducting every general election on a single day. This would drastically reduce the massive logistics and security costs of deploying personnel and materials multiple times.
2. Shifting from surge registration periods to a continuous, IT-empowered system; integrated with national identity data, that would end the expensive cycle of starting from scratch every four years.
3. While technology like BVAS is intended to build trust, the high cost of importing and maintaining these devices is a major budget driver. The Federal Government, should ensure these tools are fully utilized and reusable across cycles to avoid the so-called glitches that waste prior investments.
4. Proposed amendments to the Electoral Act should strictly regulate the influence of money by setting stiffer penalties for vote-buying and frivolous post-election litigation, which currently drain both private and public coffers.
5. Speeding up the resolution of election disputes—reducing tribunal timelines from 180 to 90 day, would lower the legal and administrative overhang that stalls governance after the polls.
“AlaIgbo Political Watchdog believes that by implementing these structural shifts, Nigeria could transition from a system where people and development suffer to one where the cost of democracy is a sustainable investment rather than a crippling debt and curse.”
