June 26, (THEWILL) – Vote buying is an act in which the voter sells his or her vote to the highest bidder. Vote buying can therefore be defined as any form of financial, material or promissory inducement or reward by a candidate, political party, agent or supporter to influence a voter to cast his or her vote or even abstain from doing so in order to enhance the chances of a particular contestant to win an election.
Thus, we can regard any practice of immediate or promised reward to a person for voting or refraining from voting in a particular way as vote buying. In Nigeria like most other democracies, vote buying is considered as an electoral offence.
Like in a typical market transaction, there are buyers and there are sellers. The politicians, political parties, and party agents are the vote buyers while prospective voters are the sellers. The commodity on sale is the vote to be cast while the medium of exchange is mostly monetary but in some instances may be non-monetary items. The market force that determines the value or price of a vote is the level of desperation of politicians to win in a locality or constituency.
The issue of vote buying, though not new to Nigeria, came into the open once again in the last governorship election held on Saturday, June 18, 2022 in Ekiti State where voters were said to have been induced with money ranging between N3,000 to N10, 000.
In many polling centres in Ekiti State during the election, reports had it that voters went for the highest bidders in the money inducement that was openly noticed.
The candidate of the Accord Party (AP) in the governorship election, Basorun Reuben Famuyibo, while confirming this, lamented what happened during the election and said that democracy had become a commodity for the highest bidder in Ekiti State.
Basorun Famuyibo, in a statement by his media aide, Olajide Omojolomoju, shortly after the election lamented the monetisation of the ballot in Ekiti State as he said the two major parties in the state, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) tried to outshine one another in vote buying in the Fountain of Knowledge state.
Famuyibo said he even ‘arrested’ an APC agent inducing voters with cash in his father’s compound in Ado-Ekiti. According to him, vote buying by the APC, the PDP and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was rampant across the 16 local government areas of Ekiti State, just as he said that operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC ) arrested some APC and PDP agents in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, for allegedly offering bribes to voteers.
“It is very unfortunate that the democracy many patriots lost their lives to entrench in Nigeria has become a commodity for the highest bidder. Where exactly are we going in Ekiti State, nay Nigeria?
“It is disheartening that the people of Ekiti, perhaps due to poverty, are yet to learn from the suffering inflicted on them in the last 12 years of APC and PDP rule. It is clear that they have chosen to ‘d’ibo koo se’be’, (Vote and cook soup) again,” he said.
The candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Dr Wole Oluyede, who voted at Ikere Ekiti, said there was brazen vote-buying allegedly perpetrated by the APC in his community, saying, “The election on Saturday shows that we are not ready for democracy. The election did not reflect good governance and the wishes of the people.”
Oluyede, who came fourth in the governorship election with 5,597 votes, said, “People called me that morning asking for money to buy votes and I told them that I was not going to buy any vote, I worked hard for my money.
“I was surprised when I got to the polling unit, I discovered that there was no amount of money the vote-buyers could not have paid to get votes and deprive the people of choosing right,” Oluyede said.
Also speaking, the candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Mrs. Kemi Elebute-Halle, complained of vote inducement, which she said did not make the election credible.
Elebute-Halle said, “In my polling unit, the APC gave N10, 000; PDP gave N5, 000; while SDP gave N3, 000 per vote as vote inducement. The whole world is watching.”
Segun Oni, who is the SDP Candidate, also alleged that there was vote-buying.
Observers noted that it was as if all the political parties in the election prepared for vote-buying, using different styles as means of contact.
It was further gathered that operatives of the EFCC, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and the Police arrested some of those who engaged in vote buying during the election.
Vote buying has been an integral element of money politics in Nigeria. Vote buying takes place at multiple stages of the electoral cycle as it has been observed during voter registration, the nomination period, campaigning and elections.
Vote buying was witnessed during the last presidential primaries by both the PDP and the APC where delegates that voted at the primary elections were induced with foreign currency.
It would also be recalled that vote buying was rife in 1992 during the Social Democratic Party presidential primary in Jos. Vote buying was one of the reasons adduced by former military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida for annulling the June12, 1993 presidential poll which was hailed as the freest and fairest election in Nigeria’s history.
Babangida had said, “Even before the presidential election and indeed, at the party conventions, we had full knowledge of the bad signals pertaining to the enormous breach of the rules and regulations of democratic elections…. There were proofs as well as documented evidence of widespread use of money during the party primaries, as well as the presidential election.… Evidence available to the government put the total amount of money spent by the presidential candidates at over two billion, one hundred million naira (N2.1 billion). The use of money was again the major source of undermining the electoral process.”
There were also widespread allegations of vote buying in the off-cycle governorship elections in Edo and Ondo States in 2016 and 2020. In the September 28, 2016 governorship election in Edo, observers reported massive vote buying by the two main political parties, the APC and the PDP. The parties were accused of giving between N3, 000 and N4, 000 for votes in several polling units.
Similarly, in the November 26, 2016 governorship election in Ondo State, it was observed that members of the APC and PDP were giving money to voters at most polling centres across the state.
Also in the November 18, 2017 governorship election in Anambra State, many observers condemned the brazen incidences of vote buying during the poll. Widespread acts of vote buying were also reported during the governorship election in Ekiti State on July 14, 2018.
Prohibition of Vote Buying
The Nigeria Electoral Law criminalises vote buying, Article 130 of the Electoral Act 2010, as amended, states that:
“ A person who — (a) corruptly by himself or by any other person at any time after the date of an election has been announced, directly or indirectly gives or provides or pays money to or for any person for the purpose of corruptly influencing that person or any other person to vote or refrain from voting at such election, or on account of such person or any other person having voted or refrained from voting at such election; or (b) being a voter, corruptly accepts or takes money or any other inducement during any of the period stated in paragraph (a) of this section, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N100,000 or 12 months imprisonment or both.
Similarly, the 2018 Revised Code of Conduct for Political Parties in section VIII (e) provides that,”… all political parties and their agents shall not engage in the following practice: buying of votes or offering of bribes, gift, reward, gratification or any other monetary or material considerations or allurement to voters and electoral officials.” Notwithstanding its prohibition, vote buying continues to be a widespread practice in Nigeria’s recent elections.
effect on the electoral system
Speaking on the issue of vote buying, the Rivers State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Obo Effanga said, “There are two ways I like to address this issue. The first point to make is that the reason there is a rise in the incidence of vote buying is because more votes are counting. If you recall, before now, politicians wouldn’t even bother whether there is an election or not when they know that they can just write the result.
“We have passed that stage of just writing results. The result has to reflect the number of people who voted and the number of people who voted will depend on what the smartcard reader recorded as people who were accredited to vote. So the votes are counting and now the politicians see a shortcut to getting people to vote for them.
“Why would you waste your time trying to explain to people why they should vote for you when you know they are hungry? So, just pay that money? So I wrote an article once where I referred to our system as transactional. At every point, people just want what this would cost to pay you off and all that.
“Now when we talk about vote-buying, a lot of times, people are focusing on what I will call the retail end. The individual goes to vote and they give him money. What about the bigger people in the vote buying value chain? So when an influential person in a state or the governor of a state tells a presidential candidate, ‘Don’t worry, in my state, we have 1.5 million registered voters, I assure you that you will get this.’ We hear that said. So those people would have given some money to these influential persons, huge sums of money to go and work in their states or their local government areas. Go and deliver your local government or in your state, or your ward, or your polling units to this party.
“What do you think that delivery means? How are they made to deliver? They are given huge sums of money to try to use it to buy votes. So before the election, you see a lot of largesse being distributed: rice, cooking oil, even for some people wrappers or T-shirts and caps at rallies. For a lot of people, that could mean the reason for voting.
“But I also tell people that the responsibility of the electoral umpire is to provide an opportunity for voters to come and vote. Nobody has a right to ask you when you come and vote ‘why are you voting for this person?’ You may have 1001 reasons. It could be because the person is your friend or your brother. It could be because the person assists you monetarily at different times, or has promised that he will assist you.
“At the end of the day, it is the individual voter’s choice how he or she wants to put whatever the reason for that. But what becomes obscene is when on Election Day at the polling unit, or the environment, people actually come and pay people to vote. So now that becomes not a problem of INEC as such, but it’s a societal problem. On Election Day, the key responsibility of the election officials is that people come and vote and he counts that vote.
“So when people say, ‘but there was vote buying’, are you saying that you would prefer that election officials not concentrate on the people who have come to vote and run after people trying to buy votes or sell votes? At best, what you can do is to draw the attention of the security agencies”.
The Government of the United Kingdom has also stated that vote buying has no place in a democracy.
It made this known in a statement released after the Ekiti governorship election and signed by the British Deputy High Commission in Lagos.
The UK frowned at the reports of vote buying, stressing that it has no place in a democracy and urged relevant authorities to hold those responsible accountable
“We are concerned about reports of vote buying during the election and call on the relevant authorities to hold any persons involved accountable. The buying and selling of votes has no place in a democracy and we urged relevant authorities to hold those responsible accountable”.
Speaking with THEWILL, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Chief Reuben Famuyibo, who is the Accord Party Governorship Candidate in the just concluded Ekiti Governorship election, Mr. Jide Omojolomoju, said vote buying if it continues at the rate it is going will destroy Nigeria’s electoral system.
“The essence of democracy is for people to freely choose those that will represent them in government. In return the elected must strive to bring dividends of democracy to the electorate. But what we are witnessing in Nigeria now is that the ruling class is exploiting the economic situation in the country to sway the voters to their side.
“The hapless victims of a bad economy created by the ruling class are exploited with little money to sway their votes to a particular party and its candidates. This is very sad. People are paid little money to get their votes and they are abandoned for four years. That is not democracy,”he said.
Also speaking with THEWILL, Paul Okonkwo, who is a public affairs analyst based in Abuja, said the level of poverty in the country has made the issue of vote buying precarious.
“The level of poverty is high and so many poor people especially in the rural areas are usually enticed with money to vote in a certain way. Poverty plus ignorance I think is what is causing the vote buying to be on the increase.
“I think we should blame the ruling class who are always very desperate to win elections. It is a bad development and I think as long as poverty permeates our society, vote buying will continue,” he said.
On the way out, Okonkwo said the only way out is for security personnel to be more vigilant and arrest the culprits.
“The INEC officials conducting elections cannot be monitoring vote buying, it is the security operatives who are always present within the polling centres that can adequately monitor party officials and their agents and ensure that voters are not induced to vote in a certain way”.
“I am of the opinion that INEC is doing its best. When INEC realised that voters usually used their telephone handsets to snap the ballot papers and show it to the party agents that they have voted for a particular candidate in order to collect money, the electoral umpire stopped the carrying of handsets to the polling booth. But trust Nigerians, they still devised all means.”
About the Author
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
