{"id":178388,"date":"2025-09-11T12:10:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T11:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/uncategorized\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec"},"modified":"2025-09-11T13:21:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:21:54","slug":"parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec","title":{"rendered":"Parties Exploit Incumbency for Early Campaigns INEC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. <\/strong><\/span>The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said that political parties in power often take advantage of incumbency to engage in subtle campaigns before the official window opens.<\/p>\n<p>Victoria Etta-Messi, INEC\u2019s Director of Voter Education and Publicity, stated this on Wednesday while speaking on Channels Television\u2019s Politics Today.<\/p>\n<p>She noted that government-backed parties frequently use rallies, billboards, media interviews, and publicising their achievements as indirect forms of campaigning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cINEC is not isolated from other Nigerians. We\u2019ve also seen all the billboards, all the rallies, all the promotions, or the promotions of the achievements by political parties, because that also is another form of campaign \u2013 letting us know your scorecard and then having weekly and monthly interviews with the press. These are all ways of remaining or staying in the faces of people. The argument today was that it is an unfair playing field because other political parties&#8230; the point was made that it cuts across most, let me not say all, political parties.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the point was made that any state you go to, any government in power, takes advantage of that and does exactly the same thing. So it\u2019s not tied to just one political party. It\u2019s just that one in particular is much more prominent. And again people are using incumbency benefits to their advantage to the detriment of those who are not in office,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n<p>Etta-Messi, however, clarified that the practice is not limited to a single party, stressing that any state you go to, any government in power, takes advantage of that and does exactly the same thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Nigeria<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said that political parties in power often take advantage of incumbency to engage in subtle campaigns before the official window opens. Victoria Etta-Messi, INEC\u2019s Director of Voter Education and Publicity, stated this on Wednesday while speaking on Channels Television\u2019s Politics Today. She noted that government-backed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":178387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16],"tags":[13554,254],"class_list":["post-178388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-parties","tag-13554","tag-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Parties Exploit Incumbency for Early Campaigns INEC - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said that political parties in power often take advantage of in ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Parties Exploit Incumbency for Early Campaigns INEC\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said that political parties in power often take advantage of in ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nigeria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-09-11T11:10:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-11T12:21:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2025\/09\/sm_1757580897.9462.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Parties Exploit Incumbency for Early Campaigns INEC\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-09-11T11:10:35+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-09-11T12:21:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec\"},\"wordCount\":287,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2025\/09\/sm_1757580897.9462.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"2027\",\"Nigeria\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"Parties\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/parties\/parties-exploit-incumbency-for-early-campaigns-inec\",\"name\":\"Parties Exploit Incumbency for Early Campaigns INEC - 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