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The Ekiti State governorship election has been won and lost. But the issues it generated, especially with vote-buying, will dominate public discussion as Nigeria walks into the general election in 2023. Vote-buying is coming up very strongly as off-shoot of the dollarization of the leadership recruitment process, as reported from the national convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
I have been following reactions to a comment credited to one Ajibola Amzat, published and circulated on WhatsApp groups. The comment is dated June 19, 2022, and purportedly written from Ekiti. In the comment, Amzat wrote: “I just returned from Ekiti where I reported the governorship election. And I learnt a few lessons. The saddest part was that people can actually vote against their long-term interest in exchange for instant gratification. I saw middle age and young people gleefully collecting bribe, ranging from N3,000 to N10,000 to vote a candidate they despise. Days to the election, the same people on the street were chanting hilarious but a warning song like Alagbara mo mero baba ole/ Ao gbodo gbo BAO l’enu yin mon. Roughly translated as “powerful, but thoughtless lot, we dare you mouth BAO again in our midst.”
Amzat further said: “I was curious and asked a few that I met, why do they despise the ruling party so much, and the response was that Ekiti people had suffered hunger and deprivation in the last four years. They spoke about absence of clear leadership in the midst of insecurity. Of high cost of living and exorbitant school fees. They wanted a change. But on the day of election, politicians among them had a different plan. They stationed party agents by the corner of the polling booth to monitor how people vote, and give them bribe afterwards. Truth be told, each party offers bribes, but APC offer was the highest. And because more people wanted higher bribe, they voted for the highest bidder. On the election day in Ado-Ekiti, I sat close to a couple of young girls who were giggling about how they almost voted for a party that offered N3,000 before they got promise of N7,000 from the ruling party. They were so happy to show the money to their friends. They cared less that someone in INEC uniform was seated nearby.
“Observers we deployed to the 16 local government areas in the state came back with similar reports. The election was largely smooth. INEC appeared to be well prepared. BVAS worked well in many places. There were no cases of major violence or rigging like we experienced in Kogi State. The key issue in the Ekiti election is vote buying. Politicians bought votes. People sold their votes. And so the lesson I learnt is that the candidates who do not have war chest to dispense in the 2023 election will struggle to win majority vote. People will talk ideal before the day of election, but on that very day, politicians will be waiting for customers, not voters. And many registered voters will become customers on election day. This is what I learnt in the Ekiti election. Again, I wish the people of Ekiti the best of luck in the next four years.”
What Amzat experienced in Ekiti may be new to him. But it is not actually new. It happened exactly the same way in the November 2021 governorship election in Anambra State. And, you know what? It will also happen in the forthcoming governorship election in Osun State. In the Anambra 20211 election, the bidding was open. No one cared about the perception being created. No one cared about the implication of vote-buying on the leadership recruitment process. What mattered most was how much was on offer; and they were amounts that would not last the next meal. There is no illusion that vote-buying will not signpost the 2023 general election. It will!
While this may sound as a sin in the leadership recruitment process, the bigger sin, in fact, a sin of a capital nature, is the dollarization of the process of selecting leaders in Nigeria. The 2022 national conventions of the APC and PDP threw up issues of serious concern on the place of money in the electoral system. Make no mistakes about it, this is not a sin exclusive to PDP and APC neither is it something that just happened. It has been the trend. In the 1980s, we saw (those who still remember) politicians inducing voters with cash to cast their ballots. Some induced with all sorts of food items. There had been instances where some dropped cash from choppers. These are our electoral realities.
However, the sad tale is that when you think that a newer generation will think and behave differently, you come home to the agonizing realisation that leopards won’t ever change their spots. Like humans, they remain the animals too. The delegates who enjoyed the dollarized primary elections in Abuja could as well be described as new breed, much the same way as those who saw nothing wrong in selling and buying votes in the Anambra and Ekiti elections. Many of the delegates were not on the scene in 2015 and 2019. So, they were new to the national convention. Could they have acted differently? Could they have rejected the dollars thrown at them? Could those who sold their votes in Ekiti and Anambra have rejected the bids? Maybe, maybe not! But the reality of the present economic situation could make people forgo morals in order to defend their territories from poverty, hunger and starvation, after all, it is a shop that opens once in four years. As it is jocularly said, a hungry mouth does not chant alleluia.
That notwithstanding, what the monetization of the leadership recruitment process in Nigeria indicates is a failure of the governmental system to punish crime and restore order, proper public conduct and morals. That Nigerians brazenly sell their votes and openly accept bribes to vote is an indication that the laws that criminalise such behaviour is non-existent; and where they exits, they mean nothing to anyone because there is a glaring lack of will to enforce them. In Ekiti, no fewer than 15 persons were arrested by state operatives for the offence of vote-buying. Their arrests ended as mere drama the same day. No further action was taken and none will ever be taken. Nigerians also saw EFCC operatives enter venues of the APC and PDP conventions. What did the visits achieve? Just to waste scare petrol to power the cars that took them there.
Fact remains that no nation makes any meaningful progress if laws are made for the sake of making them. Legislation that is not enforced is as good as one that was never made. We can go on and pontificate on the evils of vote-buying, both in the primary election and main election, but we won’t make any progress towards sanitizing the leadership recruitment process and selecting or electing people on merit, if we still approach elections as trading opportunity, one that must happen for people to live. If a stitch in time must save nine, the wearer of the cloth must first recognize that there is already a tear.
