The Centre for Social Justice has accused the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress of squandering over N4.96bn on campaigns.
The Lead Director, CENSOJ, Mr. Eze Onyekpere, while addressing newsmen in Abuja on Monday described the development as a gross violation of the provisions of the Electoral Act.
It could be recalled that the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) provides a limit on campaign expenditure of candidates.
At the presidential level, it pegs presidential campaign spending at N1bn while it goes further to provide sanctions for spending above the ceiling.
The sanction is a maximum fine of N1m or imprisonment of 12 months or both.
But Onyekpere revealed that between December 2014 and February 2015, the PDP had spent N3.55bn on publicity alone while that of the APC for the same period stood at N1.42bn.
While giving a breakdown of the expenses, he said of the N3.55bn, the PDP spent N1.05bn on campaigns in the print media to market President Goodluck Jonathan while adverts in non-print media was put at N2.5bn.
For the APC, he said the party spent N332.58m in the print media, campaigning for Maj. Gen. Muhammed Buhari(retd.) while the non-print media expenses were put at N1.09bn.
Onyekpere added, “Although, declining oil prices contributed to Nigeria’s deteriorating macro-economic fundamentals, the coincidence of campaign spending and the acceleration of the deterioration brings to the fore the inextricable link between election spending and the health of the economy.
“With the attention shifted from governance and a lot of expenditure on campaigns, the state of the economy in terms of depreciating exchange rate, inflation and reduced economic growth are bound to occur”.
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