Here Is Why Presidential Election Wins By Political Parties Other Than The APC OR PDP Are Probable By Less Than 5%.
Winning an election under any normal circumstance is usually a complicated affair for any political party in any country. It requires an alignment of the various interest of the voting population in such a way as to gain favourability from an adequate majority of such voting population. In the case of elections in Nigeria, winning can be extremely difficult for strong and deep-rooted political parties like the APC and PDP, but more so for other fringe parties that aim to make a difference on the election landscape as well. On my continuous aim to make the election landscape in Nigeria clearer to understand and after a little Twitter chat with volunteers of a presidential candidate in a newly created political party, I decided to do a little more digging into what past election data tell about the performance of fringe political parties and found out why the APC and PDP have a 95% probability dominance of the election landscape in Nigeria.
From a qualitative standpoint, the dominance of the APC and PDP in elections has a lot to do with how both parties have ‘big tents’ to accommodate the diverse nature and interest of the voting population from the grassroots to the top hills. Prior to elections in 2015 the political parties which merged together in 2015 but contested as separate entities in the 2011 elections such the ACN (which was influential in the South -West geopolitical zone) and the ANPP and CPC which were (influential in the North-West and North-East geopolitical zones) all had a very difficult time contesting against a unified PDP, which had and still has a strong influence in all 6 geopolitical zones in the country. But by the merger of the ACN,ANPP and CPC into the APC, the political landscape for the country was deeply changed, and as such their new party platform was able to gain a diverse voting population far stronger than what they would ever have if they had contested the 2015 elections separately.
With an overall voting population in excess of 60 million voters stretched across ethnic, religious, and interest lines in, it's usually very difficult for fringe or cosmopolitan political parties to gain a footing in the election landscape of Nigeria. Besides many of such fringe parties being fair ‘grassroots-based’ and having little or no name recognition, there exist one major factor which inhibits them and stands as the major reason for the dominance of the election landscape in Nigeria by the APC and PDP. That factor is simply MONEY!, MONEY!!, and more MONEY!!!.
Yes, MONEY! is the major factor for which the dominance of the election landscape by the APC and PDP is and would probably remain at 95% of all votes cast in elections conducted in Nigeria. Take the election of 2015 as a case study, according to audits done by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), campaign spending combined for the APC and PDP was 7.7 billion naira, with APC spending 2.9 billion naira, and PDP spending 4.8 billion naira averaged at 3.85 billion naira spent. Narrowed down to amounts spent on advertisement overprint, television, social media platforms etc, both the APC and PDP spent a combined amount of 3.23 billion naira, with the APC spending 728 million naira and the PDP spending 2.5 billion naira, averaged at 1.62 billion naira spent.
What results were obtained from this spending strength? A huge lot.
According to election data for the 2015 elections, of the 29,432,083 total votes cast nationwide the APC and PDP accounted for 96.1% (APC:52.4%, PDP:43.7%) of the votes cast which were 28,278,083 votes (APC:15,424,921, PDP: 12,853,162). The remaining 3.9% (1,154,000 votes) of the total votes cast were shared by the 50 remaining fringe parties which contested that election. Across the 6 geopolitical zones the vote share for the fringe political parties was all the more dismal, as the APC and PDP gained 96.7%,96.3%,96.3%, 93.7%, 94.6% and 97.6% in the NW,NE,NC,SW,SE and SS respectively in comparison to their 3.3%,3.7%, 3.7%,6.3%,5.4% and 2.4% respectively in those exact same 6 geopolitical zones. In states like Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers, vote share dominance by the APC and PDP were in excess of 98%.
Why is money important one may ask?
Quite a lot in simple terms, most especially in a country like Nigeria where major fractions of the voting population can be reached ‘offline’, ‘online’ or both ‘offline and online’. By having a campaign spending budget in excess of 7 billion naira and an advertisement spending budget in excess of 3 billion naira, the APC and PDP have and will have the capacity to transmit their respective messages, reach out and influence the voting population in ways which the other fringe parties can only imagine, as such they have and will have the capacity to win by probability margins in excess of 90–95% heading into elections in 2019. The challenge and question tasked to any of the 100 fringe parties and their supporters heading into the 2019 elections are whether they each have or can raise amounts in excess of 3.5 billion naira at a minimum, to stand a competing chance or do they throw in the towel early? That and many more are what one aims to observe as we head into elections in 2019.
For a summary description of the election landscape in Nigeria read this.
For a more detailed description of the election landscape in Nigeria download this.
