By Ogar Monday

In Marian, Calabar Municipal, just before the street to the Cross River State secretariat of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ, is a building awash with the 2023 election advertisement of party candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

The building is the office of Cross River State Infrastructural Safety and Building Regulatory Agency, and it displays several advertisements of Bassey Otu and Peter Odey, the APC gubernatorial candidate and his deputy.

Similar ads appear at the local government headquarters of Akamkpa, Biase, and Calabar Municipality, all in the southern senatorial district of the State.

Visitors to Calabar Municipal Council are welcomed by billboards of the APC candidates, mostly put in place by the Council Chairman, Effefiong Eke.

Effefiong was recently accused by the traditional rulers of the area of scuttling a planned meeting of the traditional rulers with the gubernatorial candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that was meant to hold at the secretariat of the Traditional Rulers’ Council located within the precinct of the Council headquarters.

In related development, the campaign organization of Sandy Onor, the PDP gubernatorial candidate, had accused the Cross River State Signage and Advertisement Agency, CRISSAA, of frustrating their campaign efforts to install outdoor ads by sending its agents to destroy their billboards despite paying the necessary fee.

In a letter addressed to Governor Ben Ayade and signed by Joe Bisong, the Director General of the PDP campaign organization, Effiom Effiwatt, the Director General of CRISSAA was accused of doing the bidding of the APC by destroying the billboards of the PDP.

Even at the campaign office of the gubernatorial candidate of the APC located at the Murtala Muhammad Highway, the parking signs have been provided by the state government as they carried its insignia.

Also, the State Ministry of Information and Orientation is not left out in perpetuating this alleged bias against opposition candidates.

The State’s broadcast station has also been accused of airing news stories about the APC candidates without consideration of other party candidates.

Use Of Public Utilities For Campaigns Violates Electoral Act

According to section 95 of the Electoral Act, 2022:

(1) A candidate and his or her party shall campaign for the elections in accordance with such rules and regulations as may be determined by the Commission.

(2) State apparatus including the media shall not be employed to the advantage or disadvantage of any political party or candidate at any election.

(3) Media time shall be allocated equally among the political parties or candidates at similar hours of the day.

(4) At any public electronic media, equal airtime shall be allotted to all political parties or candidates during prime times at similar hours each day, subject to the payment of appropriate fees.

(5) At any public print media, equal coverage and visibility shall be allotted to all political parties.

(6) A person who contravenes subsections (3) and (4) commits an offense and is liable on conviction, in the case of — (a) a public media, to a fine of N2,000,000 in the first instance and N5,000,000 for subsequent conviction; and (b) principal officers and other officers of the media house, to a fine of N1,000,000 or imprisonment for a term of six months.

A legal practitioner, Barrister Obodokassi Agbor told CrossRiverWatch that section 95 of the electoral law specifically seeks to ensure a certain level of equal playing ground for all candidates in the elections.

“What was readily in the minds of the lawmakers could mostly have been security agencies, agencies of the government, including their structures, and, any agency, including its structures, that are formed, built, maintained with public money and for the sake of the public,” Agbor said.

He added that the law intends that those agencies of government and their services be made available equally to all parties, and that a deliberate frustration of opposition parties is a violation of the law.

“They didn’t want office holders and government in power using public facilities and services to their advantage and in detriment to others,” Agbor said. “Anywhere this happens that law has been violated.”

Government Denies Favoring APC Candidates

Agents of the State Government have denied any allegation of partisanship, insisting their actions are well within their rights.

Isaac Ishamali, the Director General of the Cross River State Infrastructural Safety and Regulatory Agency, confirmed that there are billboards campaigning for the candidates of his party within and around his office, but that they were not placed there by him.

“When we rented the place, we thought we would be using all of it, but the owner gave part of it to someone else who is using it for campaigns,” Ishamali said.

When CrossRiverWatch asked about the name of the organization which had no signage showing it had an office in the building, the DG said he didn’t know.

Cross River State Signage and Advertisement Agency (CRISSAA) also denied helping the APC gain an advantage in the elections.

When CrossRiverWatch spoke to Effiom Effiwatt, the DG of CRISSAA he said he would not respond to the allegations by the PDP, describing them as “unfounded.”

On why more than 90 percent of the ads on the CRISSAA-owned lamp posts, located at the choicest routes within the metropolis, are of APC candidates, the DG said the PDP approached his office late after the APC had paid for the spaces, and even at that he made a concession and gave them a route around the Mary Slessor Road.

But even as the state agencies continue to deny culpability, the opposition PDP insisted that the State is deploying agents to vandalize its billboards, with the State PDP Chairman Venatius Ikem warning that the act might snowball into actual violence if not addressed.

The Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, Antony Bisong told CrossRiverWatch that the group will not comment on the illegality or not of the use of public utilities to promote candidates of the APC.

“It is the reason why we are advocating for the reduction of the N10 million fee demanded by the regulatory agency before putting out messages,” he said.

Bisong suggested that while the money is easy for some parties to raise, it is difficult for others.

This report was published with support from Civic Media Lab.