By UKERTOR GABRIEL MOTI
The controversy surrounding the APC Presidential Campaign Council raises a question that goes far beyond the politics of the 2027 election: where should the line be drawn between public office and partisan political activity?
The inclusion of the Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Dr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, as Director of Data Management, and the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zacheus Adedeji, as Deputy Director of Fundraising, deserves serious scrutiny.
The concern is not that public officials are forbidden from having political opinions or supporting political parties. The deeper issue is whether the heads of agencies entrusted with extraordinarily sensitive public responsibilities should simultaneously occupy operational positions in a partisan presidential campaign.
The NIMC case is particularly delicate. NIMC sits at the centre of Nigeria’s national identity infrastructure and manages highly sensitive personal information.
Its Director-General is therefore expected to inspire confidence that the identity system is politically neutral and used exclusively for legitimate public purposes. Making the same person responsible for data management in a partisan campaign creates an avoidable perception of conflict of interest.
There may be no evidence that NIMC data has been or will be used for political purposes, and such an allegation should not be made without evidence. But good governance is not simply about preventing actual abuse; it is also about preventing circumstances that create reasonable suspicion of abuse.
The FIRS appointment presents a different but equally troubling problem. FIRS is the institution that administers taxation and interacts with virtually every significant business and taxpayer in the country. Its Chairman is now also associated with raising funds for the President’s re-election campaign.
Even if every fundraising request is entirely voluntary and above board, the arrangement creates an uncomfortable power imbalance. A company facing a tax audit, assessment or dispute should never have reason to wonder whether a political contribution could influence its relationship with the tax authority.
This is why the issue should not be reduced to whether these appointments are technically legal. Legality and good governance are not always the same thing.
A conflict of interest does not necessarily mean that corruption has occurred. It may simply mean that an official has been placed in a position where public responsibilities and partisan interests could collide, or where the public could reasonably perceive that they might.
There is also a larger institutional danger. Government agencies belong to the Nigerian state, not to the political party in power. The APC is the ruling party today, but it will not necessarily remain so forever. NIMC will remain. FIRS will remain. Their institutional credibility must therefore transcend individual presidents, parties and electoral cycles.
The distinction between political appointees and agency heads is important here. Ministers and presidential political aides are inherently political actors and are expected to advance the administration’s programme.
But the heads of agencies exercising regulatory, fiscal, enforcement or data-management powers occupy a different institutional space. The more sensitive the public power they control, the greater the need for distance from partisan campaign operations.
This is especially important in an election year. An incumbent President inevitably enjoys enormous advantages of visibility, information, access and institutional authority. Democracy therefore requires a clear firewall between the machinery of government and the machinery of the campaign.
Otherwise, what begins as legitimate incumbency advantage can gradually become the perception, or reality, of the state being mobilised for partisan purposes.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has every right to seek re-election. The APC has every right to organise a formidable campaign. Public officials, within the limits of the law, also have political rights. But the state must remain larger than the party, and public institutions must remain larger than the political ambitions of their current occupants.
The most sensible course would therefore be for officials who head highly sensitive agencies such as NIMC and FIRS to withdraw from operational positions in the campaign council while retaining whatever political rights the law permits them to exercise.
The fundamental principle is simple: NIMC’s identity infrastructure is not APC’s political database; FIRS’s revenue machinery is not APC’s fundraising apparatus; and the institutions of the Nigerian state must never become extensions of a political campaign.
The real issue is not whether President Tinubu should campaign. He should. The real question is whether Nigeria can maintain a credible boundary between governing the country and campaigning to govern it.
That boundary is essential to public trust, institutional integrity and the credibility of our democracy.
