When the Taxman Becomes the Campaign Fundraiser: Has Nigeria Lost Its Moral Compass?

There are appointments that may be technically defensible but politically insensitive. There are others that may be legally contestable but morally indefensible. And then some appointments are so troubling in their symbolism that they force a nation to ask a more fundamental question: what has happened to the moral compass of governance?

                                    

Dr. Zach Adedeji
FIRS Chairman

The reported appointment of Dr. Zach Adedeji, the head of Nigeria’s revenue-collection agency, as Deputy Director of Fundraising for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's 2027  campaign belongs to the last category.

Senator Dino Melaye

Former Senator Dino Melaye has announced plans to challenge the appointment in court, arguing that the head of an agency responsible for collecting public revenue should not simultaneously occupy a senior position responsible for fundraising for the President's partisan re-election campaign.

The issue goes far beyond Dino Melaye. It goes beyond the APC. It goes beyond President Tinubu's ambition for 2027. It is about the boundary between the state and the party. It is about conflict of interest. It is about public trust. And, above all, it is about whether those entrusted with public authority still understand the difference between what is legally possible and what is morally proper.

A Revenue Collector as a Campaign Fundraiser? Really?

Let us imagine the reverse. Suppose the chairman of a political party's fundraising committee were appointed to head Nigeria's principal revenue-collection institution. Would Nigerians be told that there was no conflict because the person had not yet used public resources for partisan purposes? The outrage would be immediate.

Why, then, should the reverse arrangement be treated as normal?

The reported composition of the 2027 APC campaign structure places the Executive Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service in a key fundraising position. This is not merely a question of whether Dr. Adedeji is personally competent, patriotic or politically loyal. Those are not the questions. The question is whether a public official occupying a sensitive revenue-collection position should simultaneously become an operational actor in the fundraising machinery of the political campaign of the President who appointed him.

The answer, from the standpoint of good governance, should be an emphatic NO.

The danger is not necessarily that public money will automatically be diverted into the campaign. The danger is that the arrangement creates a perception of potentially an opportunity of institutional capture. And in public administration, perception matters.

A government that wishes to command public confidence must not merely avoid actual wrongdoing; it must also avoid arrangements that reasonably create suspicion of wrongdoing.

The State Is Not the President's Campaign Office

This is where President Tinubu got it completely wrong. The President is both the leader of the government and a partisan political actor seeking another term. Those two roles must be carefully separated.

The Nigerian state belongs to Nigerians, not to the incumbent, not to the ruling party and certainly not to the President's re-election machinery. The revenue authority belongs to the Nigerian state.

Its mandate is public. Its revenues are public. Its officers exercise public authority.

Its institutional credibility must therefore remain above partisan politics.

Once the head of such an institution is publicly incorporated into the fundraising structure of the President's re-election campaign, the distinction between public office and partisan enterprise becomes dangerously blurred. That is precisely what democratic institutions are supposed to prevent.

The President Should Have Known Better

This is particularly disappointing because President Tinubu is not a political novice.

He understands political organisation. He understands campaign finance. He understands the importance of institutional perception. He understands the enormous symbolic power of presidential appointments. That makes the decision even more difficult to understand.

A President should not only ask, "Can I make this appointment?"

He should also ask:

"What does this appointment say about my government?"

"What precedent am I creating?"

"How will Nigerians interpret it?"

"Would I consider this acceptable if an opposition President did exactly the same thing?"

And perhaps the most important question:

"Does this strengthen or weaken public confidence in the institutions of the Nigerian state?"

Unfortunately, this appointment fails that test spectacularly.

When Morality Becomes an Inconvenience

The deeper problem is not Zacch Adedeji.

It is the culture that makes such an appointment conceivable in the first place. Nigeria is increasingly witnessing a disturbing normalization of conduct that would once have raised serious ethical questions. Once political loyalty becomes more important than institutional propriety, virtually every boundary becomes negotiable. Once political usefulness becomes the overriding criterion for public appointment, competence and integrity can be reduced to secondary considerations. Once the government becomes comfortable with the argument that something is permissible simply because nobody has yet declared it illegal, morality becomes an inconvenience rather than a governing principle. That is the tragedy. A decent democracy cannot be sustained by legality alone. Democracy requires constitutionalism, convention, restraint, institutional ethics, and respect for the spirit, not merely the letter of the law or the public office.

The Conflict-of-Interest Question Cannot Be Wished Away

Dino Melaye's proposed legal challenge should therefore not simply be dismissed as opposition politics. According to reports, Melaye intends to ask the court to determine whether the arrangement constitutes a conflict of interest. Let the courts pronounce on the legal dimension. But Nigerians do not need a court judgment to recognise the ethical dimension. An obvious conflict of institutional expectations exists. The head of a national revenue institution should be perceived as serving the Nigerian public, while a campaign fundraiser serves a political candidate.

The former owes duties to the state. The latter owes duties to a political campaign.

Can one individual convincingly perform both roles without compromising public confidence? Even if the answer is technically "yes," the more important question remains:

Why create the ethical dilemma in the first place? Good governance is partly about avoiding avoidable conflicts.

Public Revenue Must Never Become Political Currency

Nigeria's revenue system is too important to be dragged into partisan politics.

Every Nigerian taxpayer, whether APC, PDP, ADC, Labour Party or politically unaffiliated, contributes to the revenue that sustains the state. The tax authority therefore cannot be psychologically converted into an appendage of the President's campaign machinery.

Imagine the effect on a Nigerian business owner facing a tax assessment while knowing that the chairman of the revenue agency is simultaneously a senior fundraiser for the President's campaign. Even if the tax process is entirely professional, the perception of political pressure becomes unavoidable.

That is why institutional neutrality matters. The state must not merely be neutral; it must look neutral.

And What Message Is Being Sent to Public Servants?

There is another disturbing dimension.

What lesson does this send to thousands of Nigerian public servants?

Are they expected to remain politically neutral while the head of one of the country's most strategically important public institutions openly occupies a leadership position in the President's campaign?

If senior public officials can cross the boundary between public administration and partisan campaign organisation, where exactly does the boundary stop?

At the permanent secretary? At the director-general? At the chief executive of an agency? At the police? At the military? At the judiciary? A democracy cannot afford such ambiguity.

This Is Bigger Than Tinubu

President Tinubu will come and go. So will the APC. So will every political party currently occupying political space. But the institutions being weakened by questionable political practices must survive us all. That is why those defending this appointment should be careful.

They may think they are defending Tinubu today. Tomorrow, the precedent they are helping to establish may be used against a government they support. Institutions are not supposed to be redesigned according to who occupies Aso Rock. The rules must remain strong enough to restrain friends as well as opponents.

The President Should Reverse Course

President Tinubu can still demonstrate that public ethics matter. He should reconsider the appointment. Dr. Adedeji can continue doing the job for which Nigerians expect him to be accountable: administering the country's revenue system. If he wishes to serve as a fundraiser for the President's re-election campaign, then he should first relinquish the public office that creates the conflict of roles. That would not be weakness. It would be leadership. It would tell Nigerians that the President understands that not everything one has the power to do is necessarily something one ought to do. That distinction is the foundation of political morality.

Morals Must Not Be Imprisoned in Aso Rock

Perhaps the most disturbing implication of this episode is the growing impression that morality, decency and institutional restraint have been imprisoned somewhere behind the walls of political expediency. Nigeria does not need a government that asks only whether an action can survive a technical legal argument. Nigeria needs a government that asks whether an action is right, proper, defensible and worthy of public trust. The presidency carries enormous constitutional power, but it also carries an enormous moral responsibility. President Tinubu was wrong to create this controversy. He was wrong to blur the line between public revenue administration and partisan fundraising. And he was wrong to place Nigerians in the position of having to ask whether the machinery of the Nigerian state is being progressively converted into an instrument of political mobilisation.

This is not about Dino Melaye. This is not even principally about Zacch Adedeji.

It is about Nigeria. It is about whether public institutions still belong to the public. It is about whether political power can still exercise restraint. It is about whether those in authority understand that decency is not a luxury of government but one of the foundations of legitimate government.

And if President Tinubu genuinely believes that his administration is building a new Nigeria, then the first step should be to demonstrate that the old Nigerian culture of political expediency, institutional capture and moral double standards has no place in the Nigeria he seeks to lead beyond 2027. Otherwise, Nigerians may reasonably conclude that what has been imprisoned by this regime is not merely institutional restraint, but the very idea that those who govern us should be embarrassed by impropriety.

                                            A Message for INEC

                                         

Professor Josh Amupitan
INEC Chairman

If the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) genuinely intends to conduct a credible, transparent and defensible election in 2027, then the time to begin opening the electoral books to Nigerians is now and not on election day.

The Chairman of INEC must come clean on one fundamental issue: How many polling units exist in each local government area across Nigeria, and where exactly are they located? INEC should urgently publish a comprehensive, publicly accessible register containing the details of every recognised polling unit in every local government area of the federation, including the state, local government, registration area/ward, polling-unit name or code, and the total number of registered voters attached to each polling unit. This is not an unreasonable demand. It is an elementary requirement of electoral transparency.

Nigerians have a right to know the precise polling units from which election results are expected. Political parties, candidates, civil-society organisations, journalists and election observers should be able to independently compare INEC's official polling-unit database with what exists on the ground.

The Ghost Polling-Unit Threat

There is already a disturbing rumour making the rounds that desperate political actors may be contemplating the creation or activation of fake or "ghost" polling units as part of an elaborate strategy to manipulate the 2027 elections. The allegation is serious enough to demand immediate preventive action from INEC.

The alleged scheme is said to involve the creation of fictitious polling locations which, although nonexistent physically, could be made to appear operational on paper or within electoral databases, with essential electoral materials allegedly made available to them through the connivance of compromised officials.

If such a scheme exists or is even being contemplated, it must be killed before it is born. The best antidote to a ghost polling unit is sunlight.

Publish the list. Publish the locations. Publish the codes. Publish the wards. Publish the local governments. Publish the registered voters attached to each unit.

Let Nigerians scrutinise the information. Let political parties scrutinise it. Let journalists scrutinise it. Let civil-society organisations scrutinise it. Let communities confirm whether the polling units INEC says exist actually exist.

INEC Must Not Wait for Election Day

Electoral manipulation thrives in secrecy. The more information available to citizens before Election Day, the more difficult it becomes for anyone to manufacture electoral realities after the fact. INEC therefore needs to move beyond merely announcing aggregate figures and begin providing granular, polling-unit-level information that allows Nigerians to conduct meaningful verification. For every local government, Nigerians should be able to answer simple questions:

How many polling units are there? Where are they? Which wards do they belong to? What are their official codes? How many registered voters are attached to each? Are the locations physically identifiable? Do the communities recognise them as genuine polling locations? These questions should not become controversial.

They are basic questions in an election in which every polling unit potentially generates a result.

Transparency Is the Best Defence Against Rigging

INEC should understand that suspicion is already becoming a major threat to the credibility of the 2027 elections. The Commission cannot simply tell Nigerians to trust it. Trust must be earned through verifiable transparency.

If the polling-unit register is clean, publish it. If every polling unit exists, show Nigerians where they are. If there are changes to polling-unit boundaries or locations, explain them. If new polling units have been created or approved, disclose the legal and administrative basis for their creation. If some previously recognised polling units have been relocated, merged or discontinued, publish the details and reasons. And if there are no "ghost polling units", INEC has nothing to fear from opening its database to public scrutiny.

Indeed, the earlier INEC publishes the complete information, the easier it will be for the Commission to expose and neutralise any attempt by political actors to manufacture phantom voting locations.

INEC Chairman, Nigerians Are Watching

The INEC Chairman should therefore treat this as a matter of urgent national importance. We do not need another election in which Nigerians begin discovering electoral irregularities only after votes have been cast and results declared. We do not need a situation where political parties arrive at polling units on Election Day only to discover that electoral materials have been delivered to locations unknown to the communities that supposedly host them. We do not need another election in which citizens are asked to accept unexplained figures because "INEC has spoken."

INEC must speak before Election Day. And it must speak with data. The Commission should publish a complete and regularly updated Polling Unit Transparency Register covering every state and every local government in the federation.

Let every Nigerian know the exact electoral map of his or her community. Let us know where every vote is supposed to come from. Let us know how many polling units exist in every local government. Let us know whether those polling units actually exist. Let Nigerians become the eyes and ears of the electoral process before politicians and electoral officials have the opportunity to manipulate it.

The 2027 election must not be an exercise in discovering surprises. INEC must remove the darkness before Election Day and not explain it afterwards. The message to the Commission is therefore simple:

Come clean. Publish the polling units. Publish their locations. Publish their codes. Publish the registered voters attached to them. Let Nigerians verify them.

If the system is clean, transparency will strengthen INEC. If there are anomalies, transparency will expose them early enough to correct them. Either way, Nigeria wins.