In 2017, 31
out of the 54 African countries announced their readiness to conduct general
elections between 2018 and 2019. Nationals of other countries and civil societies
in the world are watching Algeria, Mauritania, Somalia, Tunisia,
Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia,
Nigeria and Senegal as they are preparing for
the next general elections in 2019. Citizens of
voting age in these countries are expected to choose their representatives for the
presidential, governorship and parliamentary positions.
In
each country, there are total addressable voters for the politicians and their
parties. Both the politicians and parties will inform the electorate about
their programmes and while they should be the prime choice. In Nigeria, available statistics reveals that
the total number of registered voters as at January 2018 is 73,944,312.
Region
by region analysis shows that the north-west region has the highest number of
voters (18,505,984) followed by the south-west region, which has 14,626,800
while the south-south region has 11,101,093. The north-central has 10,586,965 registered
voters, while the north-east zone has 9,929,015. South-east region is the only
zone with the least registered voters (8,293,093).
Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission, the country electoral
body, expects the registered voters to reach 80 million before the end of the
year.
No doubt,
Nigerian politicians have market where they will sell their programmes.
Political parties equally have places where they will gain significant share of
votes. In an ideal democratic setting, voters as buyers of programmes or
manifestoes of politicians and parties are not expected to get monetary values
for offering their votes. The reward for voting should be qualitative
leadership and good governance that left no citizen behind today and in the
future.
While
seeking citizens’ votes, politicians and parties should not involve in
political clientelism. Monetizing votes or buying votes is an insult to the
sensibility of the voters. As demeaning as it is, money-induced partial and full
victory that occurred during Ekiti State 2018 governorship election, where
parties through their agents and members paid voters between N4, 000 and N5,
000 has shown that Nigerian voters are for sale in 2019. What transpired in
Ekiti state is not peculiar to Nigeria. It
is a generational issue with the developing countries, most especially in
Africa.
Since
the world has been informed of the vote-buying spree that characterised the
election, the
parties, the candidates and agents have been economical in the blame game. No
individual or party is ready to say I or my party was the one who or that used
the lost Knife. As Nigerians look forward to the 2019 general elections with
the keen interest from other countries in the world, it appears that voters
would be bought by the politicians and their parties. If this happens, the total
worth of the Nigerian electorate would be N365, 214,750,000 going by the average N5, 000
experimented during the Ekiti State governorship election.
Politicians and parties know the real problems
of majority of the voters. Over the years, they have been capitalizing on the
less educated electorate and high level of poverty among the populace who
actually vote during elections. Nigeria is a country where lower class keeps
increasing every year. People in the lower middle class of the country’s
pyramid are not spare.
The gains, consequences and solutions
Electorates
are yet to come to the term that collecting money before voting will not change the level of inequality that has been created by lack of good leadership and
qualitative development. Voters
lose while the politicians benefit now and in the future. The Independent
National Electoral Commission, as an umpire in the electoral process, has
promised to investigate the voting buying spree. Local
and international electoral organisations have also condemned the act. But, can Nigeria
curb buying of votes during elections?
Nigerians
are likely to wait for thousand years to get answers to this question. It will
be difficult to get the right answers now because the political leaders and institutions
are not ready to take a cue from the United States and United Kingdom which had
similar experience in 19th century. In the two countries, parties
gave voters cash, food, alcohol, health care, poverty relief, and myriad other
benefits in exchange for their votes. To gain leverage over voters, parties
gathered information about their debts, their crimes, even their infidelities.
But
the two countries exterminated the vote buying when they increased the level of
industrialization and developed the right policies that ensured economic growth.
These
increased the size and average income of the electorate, made it harder for
parties to discern people’s votes and monitor their electoral behavior, and
reduced the costs of direct communication between candidates and voters,
allowing candidates to circumvent brokers.
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