2027 Election: N3.8trn campaign spending cap faces enforcement test

Nigeria has raised the legal limits on campaign spending ahead of the 2027 general elections, but concerns are mounting about whether the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can effectively track what candidates and their political networks actually spend.

The Electoral Act 2026 doubles the maximum spending for presidential candidates to N10 billion from N5 billion under the repealed 2022 Act, while the limit for governorship candidates has tripled to N3 billion from N1 billion.

For senatorial candidates, the spending ceiling rose from N100 million to N500 million, while for House of Representatives candidates, it increased from N70 million to N250 million.

State House of Assembly candidates can now spend up to N100 million, up from the previously approved N30 million.

The limit for Area Council chairmanship candidates has risen from N30 million to N100 million, while the councillorship ceiling doubled to N10 million from N5 million.

The maximum donation from an individual or entity has also increased from N50 million to N500 million.

While political observers argue that the revisions reflect inflation and the rising cost of campaigns, the increases have renewed questions about transparency, disclosure and enforcement, particularly in a political system where campaign finance records are rarely made readily available to the public.

Political analysts argue that the challenge is not simply setting spending limits but establishing whether candidates comply with them.

N3.88trn spending ceiling

Candidates contesting Nigeria’s 2027 elections face a combined statutory campaign spending ceiling of N3.88 trillion, a BusinessDay analysis of official candidate lists and spending limits under the Electoral Act 2026 has shown.

The estimate covers presidential candidates, Senate candidates, House of Representatives candidates, State Houses of Assembly candidates and governorship candidates across 28 states.

The 18 presidential candidates on the INEC-approved list have a combined spending ceiling of N180 billion. The 1,303 Senate candidates account for N651.5 billion, while the 3,394 House of Representatives candidates have a combined ceiling of N848.5 billion.

The 9,402 State Assembly candidates account for another N940.2 billion, while 421 governorship candidates across 28 states have a combined ceiling of N1.263 trillion.

Together, the five categories represent a maximum permitted expenditure of N3.8832 trillion.

The figure represents the maximum amount candidates could legally spend if they all exhausted their individual limits.

The calculation excludes separately assessed political-party expenditure. It provides an indication of the scale of candidate spending permitted under the law ahead of the 2027 elections.

Campaign spending beyond the party structure

Presidential candidates travel across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, maintain campaign offices, deploy vehicles, organise rallies and pay for advertising, publicity and logistics over several months. Governorship candidates undertake similar activities across local government areas in their states.

Billboard permits alone can cost hundreds of millions of naira in some jurisdictions, while rallies featuring prominent entertainers, branded materials, consultants and social media influencers add to campaign costs.

Such expenditure can be difficult to capture when political support groups operate alongside formal party structures.

Groups including the City Boy Movement and Relax Tinubu is Fixing Nigeria have mobilised support for President Bola Tinubu, the APC candidate. The Obidient Movement and OK Movement have also been associated with support for Peter Obi, the NDC candidate.

The extent to which expenditure by such groups is captured in candidates’ official campaign returns is a critical enforcement question. Without comprehensive monitoring, candidates could benefit from spending undertaken by supporters without that expenditure being fully reflected in their declared accounts.

Festus Adedayo, a prominent political columnist, had earlier raised concerns about campaign finance transparency.

“The kind of massive corruption that goes into campaign funding should be an issue of interest to Nigerians,” he wrote, questioning where leading presidential candidates and governors would obtain the multibillion-naira funds required for their campaigns.

Read also: Tinubu campaign aims to buy northern votes, claims PRP chair

He argued that campaign accounts should be managed by certified accountants, with donations and expenditure subjected to periodic audits.

Legal requirements, limited public disclosure

Nigeria’s electoral framework provides for financial oversight. Section 90 of the Electoral Act 2026 requires political parties to submit annual statements of assets and liabilities, sources of funds and other assets, and expenditure to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The commission’s 2026 regulations also require audited returns covering election expenditure, including amounts spent, expenditure items and donor details.

However, the existence of these requirements does not automatically guarantee compliance or effective enforcement. Public access to comprehensive campaign finance information remains a major concern.

Paul James, an electoral and political process specialist, described the monitoring of campaign finance in Nigeria as a “wild goose chase”, citing weak transparency and the tendency for scrutiny to intensify only after elections.

“To be honest, for me, anything related to campaign finance, it’s like a mirage. I always see it as a wild goose chase, especially in relation to the opacity of the whole conversations around tracking campaign finance and also the timing of it,” he said.

James argued that waiting until campaigns have ended to examine financial returns limits regulators’ ability to identify violations while they are occurring.

“It will ultimately have no value, talking about the campaign spending limit, if regulators cannot establish what candidates actually spend, including the spending on their behalf by other actors,” he said.

He urged INEC to deploy campaign finance monitoring teams nationwide, supported by digital reporting systems and collaboration with civil society organisations, the media, financial regulators and anti-corruption agencies.

Monitoring, he said, should compare candidates’ declarations with independently collected evidence of campaign activities and prevailing market prices for advertising, rallies, transportation, branded materials and other services.

James warned that campaign funding could also provide cover for questionable sources of wealth if regulators fail to establish who ultimately finances political activities.

“Most times I see campaign spending, to be honest, my personal assessment is a money laundering venture, where people just try to clean up their money using campaign as excuses,” he said.

He urged authorities to identify the sources of donations, scrutinise suspicious transactions and ensure that third-party arrangements do not conceal the actual donors or circumvent spending limits.

Lessons from other democracies

Other countries offer examples of how campaign finance rules can be supported by disclosure and public scrutiny.

In the United Kingdom, the Electoral Commission oversees political finance, requiring parties and campaigners to report relevant donations and expenditure. Canada requires political participants to appoint financial agents and submit financial returns that can be accessed through public registries.

Germany requires political parties to submit accounting reports, with significant donations subject to disclosure requirements. South Africa also publishes political funding disclosures through the Independent Electoral Commission, including information on qualifying private donations.

Read also: Political calculations behind Tinubu’s 12-state campaign rally strategy

These systems differ in their thresholds and reporting requirements, but they demonstrate the importance of making political finance information accessible and subjecting declarations to independent scrutiny.

For Nigeria, the challenge is to translate statutory provisions into a monitoring system capable of tracking spending across formal party structures and associated campaign networks.

Consequences beyond electoral integrity

The Central Bank of Nigeria had earlier warned that rising election-related spending could fuel demand-side inflation.

“As political activities intensify ahead of the 2027 elections, increased fiscal injections and consumption spending could elevate demand-side inflation,” Muhammad Abdullahi, CBN deputy governor for Economic Policy, said earlier in the year.

Abdullahi added that “the fiscal deficit has already increased significantly, and election-related spending is likely to exacerbate this trend in 2026 and early 2027.”

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group also cautioned that pre-election expenditure could weaken fiscal discipline, undermine investor confidence and slow structural reforms.

The higher spending ceilings may reflect the realities of modern political campaigns, but their effectiveness depends on whether regulators can verify what candidates actually spend and enforce the rules when violations occur.

Without timely disclosures, independent monitoring and credible sanctions, Nigeria risks maintaining campaign spending limits on paper while allowing actual expenditure to escape meaningful scrutiny.

Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), a non-governmental organisation focused on democratic governance, had said the 100 percent – 400 percent and the donation cap that rose by 900 percent go well beyond inflation adjustment.

The organisation warned that the tenfold donation cap increase risks enabling elite capture of electoral financing where a single entity can now legally provide a candidate with N500 million.

“Penalties are stronger on paper, but enforcement credibility, not statutory language, is the real determinant of whether these provisions have any effect. Section 93’s disclosure and publication requirements for party expenditure are a genuine transparency opportunity, contingent on consistent INEC and judicial enforcement.

The Act strengthens the penalty framework on paper. However, Nigeria’s electoral history reveals a consistent gap between statutory penalties and actual enforcement. INEC has historically lacked the investigative capacity and prosecutorial leverage to pursue campaign finance violations at scale. The 2022 Act contained similar provisions that were rarely enforced,” it said.