SERAP Ultimatum: Declare Assets Before 2027 Election

ABUJA.

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has given all 19 presidential candidates cleared by the Independent National Electoral Commission for the 2027 election a fresh ultimatum, demanding they publicly declare their assets, liabilities and the sources of their significant wealth ahead of the poll, and publicly reject vote-buying in all its forms.

The demand is contained in an open letter dated August 8, 2026, signed by SERAP deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare, and addressed to President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress, Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, and 16 other candidates spanning parties from the Peoples Democratic Party to smaller platforms such as the Boot Party and the Zenith Labour Party.

Findings show the organisation is not asking for anything the law currently compels; SERAP itself concedes there is no constitutional requirement for candidates to disclose assets before, rather than after, winning office.

What SERAP Is Asking For

Checks by ValidViewNetwork show the letter sets out seven specific requests. Candidates are urged to publish their assets and liabilities, including those of spouses and unmarried children under 18; disclose the legitimate sources of significant wealth such as business interests, investments, property, gifts and inheritance; commit to updating those declarations if elected and explaining any material increase in wealth; publicly reject vote-buying and instruct their campaign structures accordingly; report credible allegations of vote-buying to the appropriate authorities; and sign a public integrity pledge binding themselves and their parties to a transparent, corruption-free election.

SERAP grounded the appeal in constitutional principle rather than statute, arguing that although the 1999 Constitution does not expressly demand pre-election disclosure, it “embodies principles of transparency, accountability, integrity in public office and meaningful participation in government.”

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The organisation also cited Paragraph 11 of Part I of the Fifth Schedule, which already obliges public officers to declare assets once in office, and Section 140(1), which requires an elected President to make that declaration before assuming office, framing its request as candidates simply moving that same obligation earlier, into the campaign itself.

A Warning On Vote-Buying

The letter’s second plank targets vote-buying directly, citing Section 125 of the Electoral Act 2026, which criminalises bribery intended to procure votes or a candidate’s return to office, and Section 14(2)(a) of the Constitution, which vests sovereignty in the Nigerian people rather than in whoever spends the most during a campaign.

SERAP’s Oluwadare argued that vote-buying is especially damaging in a period of economic hardship, since it converts a constitutional right into a cash transaction for citizens with the least room to refuse.

The organisation’s broader argument, running through the letter, is that a candidate willing to withstand scrutiny of personal wealth before the vote is more credible when promising to fight corruption after it.

A Fourth Attempt, Same Names, Different Parties

This is not the first time SERAP has made this specific request of Nigeria’s leading presidential contenders, and the history adds an ironic layer to Friday’s letter.

Ahead of the 2023 election, SERAP wrote a nearly identical open letter in June 2022 to Atiku, Tinubu, Obi and others, repeated the call publicly via social media that August, and by its own account received a response from exactly one candidate; Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress, who published an itemised list running to two used cars, a modest family house in Ondo State, a handful of phones and a New Jersey property, alongside a public pledge to reject vote-buying.

None of the eventual top three finishers in that election, Tinubu, Atiku or Obi, took up the offer at the time.Four years on, the same three names anchor the list again, though the party badges have shuffled.

Tinubu now runs as the sitting president rather than a challenger. Atiku, who contested 2023 under the PDP, has since moved to the African Democratic Congress. Obi, who ran under the Labour Party banner in 2023, is now listed under the Nigeria Da Congress.

Sowore, notably, remains on the list under the AAC, the same platform under which he was the lone candidate to comply with SERAP’s request in the last cycle.

The Candidates On The List

Beyond the three frontrunners, SERAP’s letter names Senator Sandy Onor of the PDP, Donald Duke of the PRP, Seyi Makinde of the APM, and Sowore of the AAC, alongside Okwori Ada Elizabeth Frederick, Chukwu Anita Zugwai, Rufai Adekunle Omoaje, Adenuga Sunday, Memeh Samuel, Nwanyanwu Daniel Danerechukwu, Okereke Sunday Chibuzor, Okereke Iken Esther, Abbas-Bin Aliyu, Dikwa Suleiman Mohammed, Adebayo Adewole Ebenezer and Yusuf Kabiru, representing the full spread of parties INEC has cleared for the 2027 race.

The Position As It Stands

As of Sunday, none of the 19 candidates named in the letter had issued a public response to SERAP’s latest appeal.

Given the pattern from the last electoral cycle, when only one candidate out of a similarly long list volunteered a disclosure, the organisation’s demand carries the weight of precedent rather than an expectation of compliance.

Whether Sunday’s letter produces a different outcome, with a general election still roughly a year away, is likely to become clearer only as party primaries firm up each candidate’s final standing and the campaign season proper begins