Stakeholders have advocated for stringent measures to curb vote-buying in the country’s electoral process.
They argued that the lack of punitive sanctions against perpetrators in the past have embolden the perpetrators to continue in the trade.
They made the call during a policy dialogue with the theme, ‘Addressing vote-trading in Nigeria from global comparative experiences’, organised by the Electoral Forum in collaboration with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa and MacArthur Foundation.
The Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, represented by his Chief of Staff, Otive Igbuzor, said that vote-trading had become an unusual democratic experience, which served as a clog in the wheel of free choice and democracy in Nigeria.
He said the menace had become a common phenomenon in Nigeria’s political system.
He stressed that it has only brought negative consequences to the country’s electoral system.
He therefore said, “Punitive sanctions strategies are more likely to be successful than moralistic pleas. Political actors who buy votes should face stringent consequences. Political financing reform, and ensuring election security and ballot secrecy, are equally vital in addressing vote-selling. Most of this was taken care of in the new Electoral Act 2022 passed by the National Assembly and assented to by the president.”
The chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, represented by a National Commissioner, May Agbamuche-Mbu, said the speedy passage of the National Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal Bill by the National Assembly would checkmate vote-buying.
Yakubu said, “We are going to intensify voter education and sensitise the people more with regards to vote-buying. People have also talked about poverty. Yes, we all know it’s poverty. But I also think that as soon as people begin to have faith in the electoral process, they will begin to see the power that they have over the people who are running for offices. And I believe that very soon, the story will change and the power will return to the people.”
The Electoral Forum Chairman, Prof. Bayo Olukoshi, said there had been a global consensus that seeking to eliminate the use of money in politics was almost impossible and waste of time because politicians would find ways to bring the use of money into the political equation.
According to him, democracies around the world had moved away from elimination to regulation of the use of money in politics, in a way to ensuring that the use of money did not corrupt integrity of the electoral process.
Olukoshi said, “So, money in politics is a global challenge, especially criminal money which are unaccounted and very difficult to trace. However, in our context, the debate around the issue of money in politics is again not an entirely new debate for those who are old enough to know the politics of the Second Republic where we saw increasingly the significant role of money as opposed to issues and ideas entering the Nigerian political space.
