Disclose your election funders, SERAP tells PDP, APC

By Tobias Lengnan Dapam

A civil society group, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has asked the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress to disclose their sources of funding for the 2015 elections.

The group, which served the political parties a Freedom of Information requests, asked them to “urgently provide information about their spending on the electoral campaigns and other operations linked to the February 2015 general elections.”

This was contained in a statement signed by the Executive Director of SERAP,Mr. Adetokunbo Mumuni, on Tuesday.

The group said, “By virtue of Section 1 (1) of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2011, SERAP is entitled, as a right, to request or gain access to information being requested. Under the FOI Act, your party is under a binding legal obligation to provide the applicant with the information requested for, except as otherwise provided by the Act, within 7 days after the application is received.”

SERAP urged the political parties to disclose information on their entire budget for the campaigns and other operations related to the February2015 general elections.

“They should also declare the total amounts that have been spent, the anticipated spending and the sources of any such spending, and the total contributions received by the presidential and governorship candidates and the sources of any such contributions,” the statement said.

According to the group, releasing the information would assuage the suspicion that the major political parties in the country are not transparent and accountable.

The group said the lack of transparency and accountability in political finance was seriously undermining the legitimacy and credibility of the democratic and electoral processes.