2015 elections media campaigns most expensive in history -media analysts

There appears to be a consensus of opinion among Nigerian media analysts that the 2015 election is the most expensive in the history of elections in the country, with campaign expenditure running in excess of N6.7 billion.

Though nobody has been able to put an accurate figure to it so far because of the way the campaigns were structured, making it almost impossible to collate appropriate data.

However, judging from the plethora of activities, the analysts said the total expenditure is not a small amount with the two major rivals, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) being responsible for over 90 percent of the expenditure.

According to them, what is being spent in 2015 campaign and congresses, far outweighs the total expenditure in previous elections. For instance the PDP alone spent N2.24 billion in 2011 out of which N1.93 billion, according to a report, was spent on national convention, while N168, 443 million was for publicity and announcements.

The media analysts recognised that campaign spending for elections in certain economies are costly, citing that the presidential and congressional contest alone in America, in 2012, cost over $7 billion.

They are attributing the high campaign expenses in the 2015 elections in Nigeria to the fierce rivalry between the PDP and APC which had, as at February 9, 2015, cumulatively paid for over 2,100 full page adverts in six newspapers alone.

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The number of pages in the identified newspapers is in addition to advert publications by certain groups who are loyal to either of the two major political parties. The media analysts believe that the extension of the elections to March 28 and April 11, 2015, from February 14 would further increase the total cost of the campaigns.

Media experts who believe that the PDP has been accelerating in advert campaigns on various media channels with its attendant cost, estimate that the party, in its determination to win more votes in the forthcoming elections, would likely be spending more within the period, so as to gain any lost ground.

It is however calculated that the parties would within the remaining six weeks, be spending about the same amount they spent before the elections were postponed.

One media analyst estimated the cost of the media campaigns alone by the two major political parties to be about N3 billion before the election was postponement. This means that the two parties could be spending over N6 billion on campaigns.

On the creativity of the adverts, the expert said the political parties were supposed to be articulating their strengths in various sectors of the economy and creating advertisement to support them, but regretted that they were not doing so.

Kola Ademolegun, former president of Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN) was not specific on the expected amount to be spent, but was convinced that the sum would run into several billions of naira across media channels.

Comparing the 2015 and 2011 elections, Ademolegun said “ huge budgets have gone in to this year’s election. It has been fierce and for it to be this fierce, much money had gone into it both in above and below the line activities”.

Sola Odeja, Group Managing Director of the Dmessage, a Nigerian integrated marketing communication firm, said that the political parties were sure to raise supplementary budgets for their campaigns for the remaining six weeks. Odeja could however but not put a figure to how much they could have spent.

He said it would be difficult to calculate the expended figure because in the first phase of the campaigns, which could have been a clue to the figure, the parties hardly engaged engage the media agencies.

While the renewed campaigns mean more money for the media “it does not mean   more money to the agencies.” Odeja said, describing the 2015 campaign as “the most expensive and biggest advertising campaign that has been run in this country,” regretting that advertisements were not structured and the adverts were not going through the agencies.

Between January 12 and February 9, 2015, six newspapers published a total of 1,566 full page adverts calculated to cost about N861 million on an average of N550, 000 per page.

“It is a great moment for press and outdoor adverting. The use of these platforms now is because the politicians need to tell a lot of stories. They want people to have a recall by seeing the same adverts, the same face and the same messages over and over,” Bayo Adisa a top media buyer of PHd told BusinessDay recently.

Daniel Obi