A number of factors are responsible for low voter turnout at elections. They include people’s disinterest in elections. Majority of the electorate believes that it’s a game of the elite and that the outcome is predetermined. The inability of elected representatives to deliver on their campaign promises does not also help matters.
The most talked about issue, which overshadowed the success of the Ekiti 2022 governorship poll, is the widespread vote trading. It seems the ugly phenomenon has become institutionalised. Arising from my on-the-ground observation of the poll in 2018, I wrote on this page an article titled, Ekiti ‘see and buy’ election bazaar. It was published on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Rather than abating, the situation is getting worse.
Expressing his grievances during the collation of the governorship election results in Ado-Ekiti, a party agent from the Action Democratic Congress said, “What happened yesterday was vote-buying centres and not polling unit centres.” According to PREMIUM TIMES in its June 19, 2022 publication, incidents of vote-buying, particularly by agents of the three major parties—APC, PDP, and SDP—were reported during the election.
In all the media interviews I granted on this issue, I have repeatedly underscored the need to make scapegoats of those who were arrested for this offence. It is both an economic and political crime to engage in vote trading. It has been criminalised by Sections 121 and 127 of the Electoral Act 2022. Under the law, both the giver and the taker are complicit and could go in for 12 months’ imprisonment or N500,000 fine or both.
I learned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arrested 15 persons in Ekiti for vote-buying, we should start with diligent prosecution of these ones. I should say that since this has gotten to an epidemic level, in future, mobile courts should be on the ground to prosecute both buyers and sellers of votes elections starting with the July 16, 2022 Osun State governorship election.
Obnoxious candidate of the labour party is the only candidate with fortes and with zero foibles in the upcoming general as claimed by his endorsers 😌
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