Nigeria's democracy
is under threat following growing trend of vote buying and selling in
elections. Capacity, competence and character are not parameters for assessing
electoral candidates. Cash-for-vote or 'see and buy' is emerging as the major
determinant of electoral choice. Besides being illegal as explicitly stated in
Nigeria's electoral laws, vote buying also has a tendency to aggravate
corruption in public offices as those who hold public mandates are made to seek
corrupt means of enriching themselves towards future elections. Vote buying, in
its literal sense, is a simple economic exchange. Candidates “buy” and
citizens/electorate “sell” votes, as they buy and sell apples, shoes, or
television sets. The act of vote buying by this view is a contract, or perhaps
an auction in which voters sell their votes to the highest bidder. This is why
money bags venture into politics with ultimate ambition of capturing power with
ease. Public offices have become chattels with rich politicians becoming
mercantile too. This menace is undermining electoral choices and could imperil
Nigeria's democracy if not abated. It is on this note, the paper critically
examine the concepts of vote-buying and voting behavior, and its negative
effects or challenges it reposed on the electoral and democratic consolidation
in Nigeria using qualitative method of data collection. The study revealed that
vote buying politics has a great setback on voting behavior and democratic
governance in Nigeria. The paper posited that vote buying is consistent with
the continued materialization and commercialization of party politics in
prebendal Nigeria wherein electioneering and partisan relations are commodified
in a manner that translates to economic exchange. Elections provide citizens
with a say in the decisions that affect their everyday lives and provide
governments with a legitimate authority to govern. However, only when elections
are free, fair and credible can they help promote democracy, human rights and
security. When elections are fraudulent and subject to vote rigging, they have
the potential to trigger political instability and violence. It is also revealed that effective
governance, virile democratic institutions and citizenship rights are achievable
only when undue interferences are avoided.
The paper further revealed that any polity where voters are not
completely or as much as possible insulated from outside pressure most
especially, they cannot choose freely. It notes that if power and money
influence take the centre stage of determining the elector choices, the very
essence of constitutional rights of the citizens to freely exercise their
freedom of choice and equality in the democratic society may be called to
question while such good governance and development will remain a mirage. The
study contends that resolving the issue and reversing the trend may involve
general economic empowerment of voters (citizens), far more than and beyond
casual tinkering with modalities of voting and improving balloting secrecy by
the authorities. It will take good governance, legal enforcement,
prioritisation of employment generation, restoration of ideological base for
political parties, holistic war on corruption, and effective poverty reduction
as policy options towards reversing and remedying the ugly trend.
