EDITORIAL: Stopping the menace of vote buying in Nigerian elections - Premium Times Nigeria

The recent off-season Ekiti State governorship election was blighted by vote buying, among other malpractices. Vote buying has become an obscene phenomenon that increases in every election in Nigeria without any decisive official response to counteract it. This bodes ill for the 2023 general elections which might end up being decided by the size of the ‘bribe budget’ rather than the choice of citizens.

The Socio-Economic and Peoples Right , in its nudge for action, gave the Independent National Electoral Commission a seven-day ultimatum within which to identify and prosecute the perpetrators, just as the British High Commission in Nigeria stressed that, “buying and selling of votes has no place in a democracy.” The U.K. authorities could not be more correct.

Admittedly, this kind of electoral malfeasance did not originate in the Ekiti State poll. It has prevailed in every election, and grown with each new poll. In times past, bags of rice, N500 or more were freely given out to induce voters. But this clutched a notch higher in the recent presidential primaries of the two main political parties this year in Abuja, where delegates allegedly received as much as $15,000 each.

It is possible to reverse the vote buying practice. For instance, it is generally known that politically exposed individuals usually withdraw humongous amounts of cash from banks a few days to elections. As such, it is the responsibility of security agencies to monitor such funds and ensure that they act if these monies are used in violation of the Money Laundering Act 2011, as amended. The law’s 12 Sections were strengthened in 2012.

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