Who Pays For Power?

The money that helps elect governments may not stop influencing them after election day

Nigeria’s elections have a visible face and a concealed financial architecture. Citizens see candidates, rallies, posters, promises, political parties and, eventually, ballot boxes. Behind that public theatre, however, moves another contest involving businessmen, contractors, political patrons, corporate interests, support groups and other financiers.

The obvious question is who pays for political power. The more important question is what happens to those financial relationships after power has been won.

Does political money disappear when the votes are counted? Or does some of it return later, in the form of access, influence, contracts, concessions, appointments, regulatory advantages or preferential treatment?

That is the question Behind the Mask must pursue.

Nigeria has long struggled to make political finance sufficiently transparent. Research into the 2015 presidential election, for example, produced published reconstructions of PDP fundraising running into tens of billions of naira. One reconstruction put reported fundraising at ₦22.442 billion, with contributions attributed to sectors including oil and gas, real estate, transport and aviation, and power. Another academic reconstruction produced a different total because of differences in classification.

That discrepancy is itself instructive.

If publicly available material can produce different accounts of the money raised by a major political party, the larger question is how completely Nigeria knows who finances political power and through which channels.

But a contribution, by itself, proves very little. A donor is not automatically buying a contract. A businessman who supports a candidate is not automatically purchasing a government favour. A company that later receives a public contract is not automatically repaying a political debt.

The investigative test must therefore be more demanding.

Who gave? How much? Through whom? When? What interests did the contributor control? What happened afterwards? Did the same interest subsequently appear in government contracts, concessions, privatisation arrangements, appointments or regulatory decisions? Was the subsequent decision competitively and transparently made? Was there a demonstrable connection between the political contribution and the later government decision?

That sequence matters. It is the difference between journalism and insinuation.

Nigeria’s electricity sector provides one of the clearest places to examine the possible relationship between political finance and public policy.

Academic research has specifically examined what it describes as the intersection between patronage funding of the Peoples Democratic Party and power sector reform between 1999 and 2015. The study examined the political financing system alongside electricity reform, privatisation, government contracts and the interests of political and business actors.

Its findings and allegations demand careful treatment.

The research reported allegations surrounding the transparency of the power sector privatisation process and claimed that some companies created from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria were effectively connected to major financiers of the ruling party.

Those are allegations and research findings, not judicial determinations of criminal guilt.

But they are sufficiently serious to justify documentary examination.

The same study cited testimony before a Senate committee that about ₦155 billion in grants released by the Federal Government to companies created from PHCN in connection with the Multi Year Tariff Order had not been properly accounted for.

That is no longer merely a question about campaign donations. It becomes a question about what happened to public money after political and economic interests converged around a strategically important national asset.

The study also discussed allegations surrounding the privatisation process itself and relationships between political financing and subsequent beneficiaries.

Again, the proper journalistic response is not to declare guilt. It is to ask for the documents.

Who bid? Who qualified? Who ultimately acquired the assets? Who financed the political establishment at the time? What companies or individuals stood behind the successful bidders? What relationships existed between those interests and political actors? What did the relevant government agencies record? What did parliamentary investigations find? What did the courts determine where disputes reached litigation? And, most importantly, did the public interest ultimately receive the value promised by the reform?

These questions remain legitimate regardless of which political party is involved.

There is a misconception that political influence must look like a written instruction. It rarely does.

Money does not necessarily need to purchase a signed promise. It can purchase access.

Access can determine whose telephone calls are answered, whose proposal reaches a minister, whose concerns are heard by a regulator, whose project receives political attention and whose interests become difficult for government to ignore.

That does not mean every wealthy political supporter exercises improper influence. It means a democracy must be able to distinguish legitimate political participation from private capture of public decision making.

That distinction becomes particularly important where the same individuals or corporate interests repeatedly appear around both political financing and major public economic decisions.

The question is not whether businessmen are allowed to participate in politics. They are.

The question is whether political finance creates invisible creditors whom government later feels obliged to accommodate.

That is where democracy can quietly become compromised without a single secret agreement ever being discovered.

The cost of entering Nigerian politics provides another window into the problem.

For the 2023 elections, the APC presidential nomination form cost ₦100 million. Its other nomination forms also carried substantial prices. Contemporary estimates suggested that the party could generate more than ₦30 billion from the sale of nomination and expression of interest forms.

That amount was not a small political contribution. It was a substantial political war chest.

But the story did not end there.

In 2023, APC National Vice Chairman Salihu Lukman accused the party leadership of failing to account adequately for more than ₦30 billion allegedly realised from the sale of nomination forms. The allegation was disputed.

The important point is not to convert Lukman’s allegation into an established fact.

It is to recognise what the controversy exposed.

Who accounts for political money after it enters the party system?

If tens of billions of naira can be generated through nomination processes, citizens are entitled to know how such money is received, held, spent and reported.

The same principle applies to private donations.

Transparency cannot be selective.

There is also an important development that the original version of this investigation could not have incorporated.

Nigeria’s Electoral Act 2026 has changed the statutory environment.

The presidential campaign spending limit has risen from ₦5 billion under the previous regime to ₦10 billion. The governorship limit has risen from ₦1 billion to ₦3 billion. The Act also raises the maximum donation by an individual or entity to a candidate from ₦50 million to ₦500 million.

That development changes the scale of the question.

If one individual or entity can legally contribute up to ₦500 million to a candidate, what safeguards ensure that such a contribution does not translate into disproportionate political access?

The law can establish a ceiling. It cannot by itself eliminate influence.

That requires disclosure, scrutiny, auditing, enforcement and an institutional capacity to follow the money.

There is another category that must never be confused with private political finance.

Public money.

If a businessman spends his own money supporting a candidate, the transaction raises questions of influence and disclosure.

If government resources are converted into political resources, the matter becomes fundamentally different.

Then the money belongs to the citizens.

Government vehicles, public facilities, official personnel, administrative machinery, public contracts and budgetary resources cannot legitimately become private instruments of political competition.

This is why every serious examination of political finance must ask not only who donated privately but also whether public resources were subsequently mobilised for partisan advantage.

The distinction is fundamental.

Private political money raises questions about influence.

Public money raises questions about sovereignty.

Nigeria’s political finance problem is therefore larger than campaign expenditure. It concerns the relationship between money and access.

A democracy can survive wealthy citizens supporting political candidates.

What it cannot safely tolerate is a system in which political power becomes dependent upon financiers whose subsequent claims upon government are invisible to the public.

The danger is not simply that one businessman may receive one contract.

The deeper danger is that an entire system of political financing can gradually create a class of invisible creditors of the state.

The people vote.

The politician wins.

The financier waits.

Then, sometime after the election, the relationship may reappear in a different form: a contract, a concession, a licence, an appointment, a regulatory decision, a policy intervention or privileged access.

Sometimes there may be nothing improper about it.

Sometimes there may be.

The only responsible way to know is to follow the trail.

And that is precisely what Nigeria has not done sufficiently well.

Political parties should disclose their financing completely and promptly. Donation and expenditure limits must be enforced rather than merely announced. Political support groups and other vehicles through which campaign money moves should face meaningful transparency obligations. Major donors should be identifiable. The beneficial ownership of companies participating in major public transactions should be traceable. Public procurement, concessions and privatisation processes should leave documentary trails capable of independent examination.

And, where legitimate grounds exist, investigators should be able to examine whether major political financiers subsequently became beneficiaries of public decisions.

The purpose is not to criminalise political participation. It is to prevent political participation from becoming a private investment scheme in which citizens unknowingly provide the returns.

Nigeria does not need a system in which a donor is presumed guilty because he gave money to a politician. Neither does it need a system in which a government official is presumed corrupt merely because a company connected to a donor later won a contract.

It needs something more demanding.

Evidence.

And it needs institutions strong enough to follow that evidence wherever it leads.

Because the central question is no longer simply who pays for elections.

It is who acquires influence after paying for political access.

That is where the mask begins to matter.

Political power belongs to the Nigerian people.

Those entrusted with that power may receive legitimate support from citizens, organisations and businesses. But once power has been won, its first creditor must remain the public.

Not the donor.

Not the contractor.

Not the political patron.

Not the corporate interest.

The Nigerian people.

And if the money that helps install political power eventually acquires a claim upon the exercise of that power, then the issue is no longer merely campaign finance.

It becomes a question of sovereignty.

That is the mask Nigeria must have the courage to remove.