Money, media and elections

There are all kinds of villains in life. Mosquitoes, bad-hair days, people who lean on their car horns even though there’s no possible way outside of a James Bond movie you could make that left-hand turn without risking your own life, or at least the life of your elderly car. And then there’s money, whose […]

There are all kinds of villains in life. Mosquitoes, bad-hair days, people who lean on their car horns even though there’s no possible way outside of a James Bond movie you could make that left-hand turn without risking your own life, or at least the life of your elderly car. And then there’s money, whose corrupting power has only accelerated and unleashed obscene amounts of cash donations from secret sources into our political process. The influence of money has, in fact, turned our democracy into a nairacracy.
The 2015 general elections, special interests pumped big money into promoting or tearing down candidates and ballot initiatives in elections across the country. It was a reprise on a small scale we saw going into presidential race in 2011. To sway the vote, parties are spending the bulk of this money on voters, traditional, religious institutions and televised political ads designed to mislead voters and boosting revenues at a handful of media conglomerates that have a near-monopoly over the airwaves.
They say in politics that where you stand depends on where you sit. Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote. Nairacracy means the rule of the naira: one naira, one vote. Nairacracy has the ability to animate dead ideas. You can take an idea that is a bad idea, buried by the voters. Nairacracy can exhume it and that zombie idea will walk among us.
So where’s the broadcast medium in all of this? Instead of exposing this runaway spending and separating fact from fiction in an election year, they’re lining their pockets with the windfalls from this massive advert buy.
But even though in this new era of elections, we are experiencing a step change, we need to advance reforms that will shed more light on this problem, while nurturing the media of, by and for the people and equally give us the reporting we need to make informed decisions at the polls.

Ahmed Abdulrahman, Kaduna <[email protected]>;