Stopping Vote-Buying Is Nigeria’s Lost Battle

 By Tonnie Iredia

About a month ago, when the Ondo State governorship election was some two weeks away, this column examined the possibility of the state enjoying a seamless election and came to the conclusion that even if the election surprisingly comes out well, one irreversible negative aspect would be vote buying which happens in every Nigerian election.

Well, the said Ondo election has come and gone and reports from election observers have confirmed our prediction. According to the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room made up of civil society organisations (CSOs) working in support of credible elections and governance in Nigeria, there was “widespread vote trading across the state, with voters and party agents openly engaged in the exchange of votes for cash, ranging from N10,000 to N20,000 in all 18 local government areas.”

Vote buying will no doubt be difficult to stop because not many believe it is wrong to buy and sell votes. The public perception is that those against vote buying are people who do not have enough resources to seriously compete with their opponents. In truth, candidates and their political parties are fully aware that votes would have to be bought hence a budget for it is usually one of the first items they work on while preparing for elections. 

Yet, the same politicians are the loudest among those condemning vote buying. Under the circumstance, the point can be made again today that the fight against vote buying is a charade because it is a game everyone plays. Put differently, the fight will not only always be lost at every election; it would remain a battle that was lost even before it began. 

There are several reasons why the situation is not likely to change in the nearest future. To start with, not many understand the nature and true meaning of vote buying. Whereas some people see the concept only from the point of view of the open trading that takes place on a typical voting day, vote buying is much wider than that. 

The term, ‘vote buying’ is indeed not just a voting day activity, there is always vote buying before, during and after the casting of ballots. Besides, the trade is not restricted to the use of money; other material benefits are also patently in use in the popular trade. In addition, vote buying is not only used to induce voters to cast their ballot in favour of the buyer, it is also deployed to stop some voters from voting at all. The goal here is to reduce the voting figures in an opponent’s location of strength

It is therefore not enough to stop the buying and selling of votes on voting day which many often focus upon. In fact, the fight against vote buying can hardly gain traction if it does not commence aggressively well before the casting of ballot. 

This becomes clearer when it is realized that a candidate who raises huge resources to buy votes is encouraged to do so only because he or she had become the flag bearer of a political party. What this means is that the candidate had engaged in perhaps more serious vote buying within the party to persuade party delegates to support him or her as an aspirant. In the recent past, many Nigerian politicians struggled to become delegates of their parties simply because it had become exceedingly lucrative.

Just before the general election of 2023, there were reports of how several hotels garnered huge profits from the lodging of delegates in their rooms many days before party primaries. There were even undisputed reports that during the presidential primaries of the nation’s two major political parties, the average delegate went home with no less than fifteen thousand US dollars ($15, 000) for voting for an aspirant who became the party’s candidate. 

On this score, it is easy to conclude that vote buying is not as simplistic as the general perception which sees the phenomenon as essentially the buying and selling of votes on the open market day of the casting of ballot. Vote buying is therefore not only costlier before voting day, but attacks on it are less intense as that of the clamour for an end to voting day trading.

Interestingly, reports which highlight voting day trading focus more on how voters produced evidence that they voted for a particular candidate or party before they were paid. There is usually no corresponding searchlight on law enforcement agents who look the other way during the process or who are themselves seen picking up their own loots. 

Yet since the Electoral Act of 2010, vote buying has been formally categorized as an offence punishable by huge fines and years of imprisonment in Nigeria. Again, vote buying does not end with the casting of ballot, there is collation of votes currently recognized as the elephant in the room whose price may naturally fit its size. The seller is not necessarily a voter who is dispensing with a personal vote; instead, the seller here simply nullifies all the votes bought and sold during the casting of ballots by swapping votes, cancelling some and altering others in favour of the highest bidder.

The immense power of the collation trader is far wider than is imagined as it includes the power to allocate votes to polling units where elections did not even hold. The implication of this is that a candidate who has resources and access to the collation trader may not waste energy in buying votes during the casting of ballots. This is because the determination of the invisible group of collation merchants is final in the declaration of winners. 

No one knows the exact value of payments made to merchants who work on segments such as the mass thumb printing of unused ballots, as well as the alteration and mutilation of result sheets. Whereas the invitation to different intellectuals to declare winners is capable of giving some semblance of credibility to the process, how can one quantify what is payable to those who read whatever is recorded?

Another factor encouraging vote buying is the nation’s economic meltdown. It is very difficult to persuade a voter who had not eaten some days before voting and is not sure of his next meal to reject a sale of his ballot that can yield a few cash for the moment. The argument that a voter’s ballot is his strength which should not be sold for a mess of porridge is quite convincing to some people but not persuasive to the poorest of the poor. To the latter, it is worse that no one is saying anything about the huge gains of delegates or the millions that party officials commandeer to play one aspirant against the other. If any type of vote buying is wrong, perhaps it is unfair to focus on the little gains of the poor.

Considering that vote buying is basically the exchange of both monetary or other material benefits for political support rather than the purchase of ballots on a typical voting day, those who have been clamouring for an end to vote buying in Nigeria will become more circumspect. They will become more appropriately sensitized to the fact that we are dealing with an ordeal that stretches as far as to the conflicting rulings and all forms of injustices coming out of our judiciary. They will realize that while vote buying which takes place during the casting of ballot is illegal and a crime, a fight against that segment alone is rather cosmetic and incapable of changing the systemic problems of Nigeria’s electoral process. It is therefore time to hold the horn of the Bull.

The goal is not just to stop vote trading but to achieve a credible electoral system. Who says some efficacy will not be attained in the fight if we can reduce our lucrative democratic system? Now that we know that our federal law makers earn N14million per month, the equivalent of the take-home pay of a dozen top executives in the federal service, we ought to know that election to such an office would be capital intensive. 

The posture of political office holders in Nigeria if viewed through a microscope will virtually reveal their determination to bribe even the Divine, just to get into office. This is part of why the battle to sanitize our electoral system by ending vote trading got lost before it started from the return of democracy to the country in 1999. 

*Dr. Iredia is a commentator on public issues