A little girl in Lagos named Nicole Benson was in the news lately for donating her lunch money to Buhari’s campaign. There’s been some photo ops like that in the media since election campaigns started last year.
Politicians like to publicise the small donations they receive and talk about how it proves their popularity with the ordinary people. But the money that really pays for elections comes from big donors, not small people obviously. However, some politicians in the world get to pull in some big bucks from small donors when they’re raising money for campaign.
40% of donations to Barack Obama in 2008 were less than $25 for instance, and he raised more money from small donors than all the money his opponent raised put together in 2011. Most of his small fundraising was done online.
One of the drives involved an online raffle where you could donate $3 for a chance to win a seat at a fundraising dinner that Obama was billed to attend. He raised £300m in 2008 and a record breaking £450m in 2012 for his reelection through efforts like that.
Five years ago, Labour leader Ed Miliband was running for MP too in the UK and his team sent out an email to supporters that said, “We want to raise £5,000 in the next 24 hours to build on our grassroots success. Will you donate £25 or whatever you can afford to our campaign to help us reach that target?”
It worked. They raised £8,000 in one day.
A lot of Nigerians speak zealously about their favourite candidate and they argue nonstop on social media about how he’s better than others. However, almost all Nigerians have never donated to a political campaign before. It’s just not in our history.
Perhaps the main reason is that people don’t think contributing to their campaign would make a difference and they don’t trust the system. They don’t believe that their money will be used cleanly.
‘You can give as much as you want,’ says Funke, ‘but the whole system is poorly regulated and you cannot guarantee that your money will be spent for the purpose. It probably would just end up in someone’s pocket. That’s why I don’t see myself donating to a politician even if I intend to vote for them.’
A message recently went around on social media asking what people would do if they get a bank alert that some money has been deducted from their account towards Buhari’s or Jonathan’s campaign.
Ovie says, ‘I could donate to a candidate if I really believe in him or her. But the truth is these politicians and their parties have got a lot of money to throw around already. In fact, some even pay people to vote them. So I believe they don’t need my money and it doesn’t matter to them anyway except for the PR. It’s enough if I volunteer my time to go and vote for a candidate.’
Last year some rich people at a PDP fundraiser pledged over N20b to support President Goodluck Jonathan’s bid for a second term. It gave the president some bad publicity.
The APC would like you to think of Buhari as the underdog relying on small donations from traders, kids and poor people while the president is taking billions from wealthy businessmen and politicians. But that’s just the way it is with politics.
The bottom line is that money often goes a very long way in determining who wins a big election like the one we’ll be voting in this weekend. So whether it’s the big shots like Aliko Dangote or small people like Nicole Benson and Hajia Mai Talle who’re putting the money on the table, the point is, money does the trick.
Let’s assume little Nicole really did save up her lunch money to help Buhari become president. Then that’s a nice gesture that people can learn from. Sometimes one of the things we can learn from a nine year old is that there are times when we’ve got to put our money where our mouth is.
