Abati: Businessmen And The 2011 Elections

Note: Witnessing the growing “purchase” of public policy (e.g. Wisconsin) by big business interests in the US, and the recent Supreme Court ruling that (amazingly) money as political donations is equivalent to “speech,” it is worrying to see in this article an appeal to US practice as a rationale for supporting business investments in political candidates.  It is difficult to agree with Abati’s conclusion here that “This is a needless controversy.”  Rather, it is a very slippery slope.  Nigeria, beware.  This could become the ultimate 419, bringing down any semblance of a democratic system.

Guardian

20 March 2011

Abati: Businessmen And The 2011 Elections
BY Reuben Abati Opinion

GOVERNMENT  is big business and in Nigeria it is perhaps the biggest business in the land. Everyone has a right to take interest in how governments are constituted and the politics leading to their emergence, as well as the politics of their operation. As Nigeria prepares for the 2011 elections, and with everyone taking a keen interest in politics, political parties and the candidates, there has been the usual complaints in certain quarters about the overt interest being shown in the 2011 elections by businessmen, including direct, partisan participation in politics. The Business Day newspaper in an editorial on March 18 titled “Bankers’ romance with politicians” protests the involvement of bankers in political activities as this open partisanship purely represents “speculative funding through loans that could attract a political backlash”...

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