An election monitoring group, the Centre for Transparency Advocacy has said only a buoyant economy which keeps Nigerians legitimately engaged would guarantee free electoral process devoid of vote-buying and violence.
The CTA made the observations in its preliminary statement on Kogi and Bayelsa elections.
The statement signed by CTA Executive Director, Faith Nwadishi pointed fingers of scorn at the two major parties, the People’s Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress for the ballot stuffing and snatching that characterised the election in the two states.
The statement read in part ” Our observers witness many cases of agents of the political parties being involved in shady business directly, only three parties showed considerable and consistent presence on the ground through their agents.
These were the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Action People’s Congress (APC) who had party agents in most Polling Units.
“However, outside the conduct of the party agents, the widespread incidences of violence and vote-buying clearly indicate that the main political parties are still committed to sabotaging our democracy.
The level of desperation displayed in these elections shows they do not respect the electorate. They seem bent on installing violence and vote-buying as permanent features of our elections.
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“After what our observers witnessed yesterday, the only conclusion we could come to is that the conduct of the political parties and their agents has cast a serious slur on the credibility of the elections.
“As we continue to observe the process of the collation of results from this election, we note that though INEC as an institution has shown the capacity for incremental improvement in the management of elections in Nigeria, it seems to be the only institution amongst the stakeholders committed to this, while all the others, including a huge section of the electorate, seem stuck in the ignoble past. Indeed, in many instances, they seem to have turned worse.
The political parties are the biggest culprits in this regard. We are convinced that because there is generally no deterrence for electoral malfeasance, they have plunged new depths in electoral bad behaviour.
“While we admit that the people to encourage this bad behaviour through complacency and collaboration with the bad actors as evidenced by their participation in the vote-buying and vote-selling exercises, there is a case to be made for the poor socio-economic condition forcing a huge and significant section into engaging in desperate actions with politicians on election day.
This is the root cause of violence and vote-buying and politicians are only cashing in on it. But if we really want to save our democracy and our country, it’s about time the state gets serious with the question of returning credibility to our elections at every level.”