Political Money and Political Corruption: Considerations for Nigeria

Paper delivered at the “INEC-Civil Society Forum Seminar on Agenda for Electoral Reform” in November 2003 in Nigeria. This paper discusses how political finance is influenced by, and influences, relations between parties, politicians, party membership and the electorate. Money matters for democracy because much of democratic political activity simply could not occur without it. Narrow definitions of political finance tend to focus on ‘campaign and party funding’. In fact, many extra-party actors are involved in political competition with the objective of shaping public policy agendas, influencing legislation or electoral debates and outcomes.