Vote buying eradicates good governance

The 2019 general elections have come and gone leaving political analysts, public commentators and scholars with recapitulation and dissatisfaction on how the vote buying phenomenon dominated the election exercise. Now in Nigeria political matrix, “vote buying”is a lucrative venture and another instrument of rigging used by political entrepreneurs.

Vote buying in Nigeria’s political context is in two forms; close vote-buying which take place at home by providing gift materials to the electorate and the open vote-buying which takes place at polling units by giving money or other things in order to secure the electorates’ votes.

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The cancer called vote-buying means to sell ones franchise on the day of election in a polling unit or at home against good intentions or conscience and thereby mortgage ones future and that of children unborn for peanuts.

But most Nigerian electorates have not realized their strength therefore the political circuit has become a stock market where votes were traded during this year’s elections. The consequence of this is that the electorate should not expect to get good governance because the more yo

u collect money, the less you have good governance and the more you vote the capable candidate and refused to sell your vote, the more you have good governance, for every buyer there must be a seller, if there are no sellers, there will be no buyers.

Rigging has become our electoral culture. My advice to the National Orientation Agency (NOA), traditional rulers, security agencies, religious organizations  civil societies, judiciary and the media is that all hands must be on deck to stamp out this deadly disease by sensitizing the public on this.

Bello Shehu Shuni           

Belloshuni79@gmail.com