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During Nigeria’s 2023 elections, election observers reported voters being offered remarkably small things. In some polling units, it was ₦1,000 or ₦2,000. Elsewhere, voters were offered wrappers, rice, spaghetti, drinks or other food items. Yiaga Africa documented several such cases during the governorship and state assembly elections, while the Centre for Democracy and Development reported evidence of vote buying from 11.3 per cent of its observers during the presidential election and 25.3 per cent during the governorship elections.
The amounts themselves tell part of the story.
A few thousand naira should hardly be enough to determine who exercises political power for four years. Yet its value looks very different to someone who is uncertain about the next meal.
Nigeria enters every election with millions of people living under considerable economic pressure. The World Bank’s April 2026 projections put about 63 per cent of Nigerians below the national poverty line. Poor households also spend a particularly large share of their income on food.
In that environment, vote buying becomes more complicated than the familiar story of a voter simply selling a ballot.
For someone whose household has food for the week, ₦2,000 offered outside a polling station may be easy to dismiss.
For someone who has not eaten properly that day, the calculation may be different. A bag of rice or a few thousand naira has significant value. The promises contained in a manifesto are about what might happen months or years later or not at all in many weak democratic contexts. Hunger shortens the political horizon.
There is evidence suggesting that food insecurity can make electoral inducements particularly potent. A recent Nigerian study involving 400 respondents across the six geopolitical zones reported that 72 per cent of respondents experiencing severe food insecurity said they had been offered food or consumables in exchange for their votes.
We should be careful, however, about reducing vote buying entirely to poverty. Another 2025 study using Afrobarometer data found that partisanship was a stronger predictor of who politicians targeted for vote buying, while poverty itself was not a strong predictor.
Political parties have many reasons for targeting particular voters, including loyalty, local organisation and the competitiveness of an election.
Poverty still changes the environment in which those offers are made. The deeper concern is what repeated electoral transactions can do to accountability.
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Ordinarily, an election should give citizens an opportunity to look back at the previous four years. Did roads improve? Did schools function? Was electricity more reliable? Could people find work? Did clinics have medicines? Were public funds used responsibly?
Vote buying introduces another consideration into that decision that is, what is being offered today. For many voters here in Nigeria, accepting money reflects very low expectations of government. If someone expects little improvement after the election, taking what is available beforehand can appear perfectly rational. The reasoning then becomes, “since politicians may disappear after voting, collect whatever is available now.”
That attitude did not emerge without context. It grew more easily with citizens having repeatedly experienced poor services, unemployment, insecurity or little evidence that electoral promises will improve their lives.
An older Afrobarometer study of Nigerian elections found something unexpected in my opinion. Accepting an inducement did not guarantee that a voter would actually vote as requested. Voters could take gifts and still make another choice in the privacy of the ballot box. That might appear to defeat vote buying but the longer-term problem remains.
When political competition becomes associated with distributing cash, food and personal favours, politicians have fewer incentives to build relationships with citizens around public services. The voter begins to encounter the political system through private exchanges such as money for this person, food for another community etc.
In addition, poverty increases the immediate value of small material benefits. Those benefits can weaken the connection between electoral choices and government performance. Weak accountability can then allow poor public services and economic hardship to persist. Breaking that cycle involves more than policing polling units.
Nigeria already prohibits electoral inducement, and stronger enforcement can make vote buying more difficult. Yet the experience of 2023 showed how easily inducement changes form. The shortage of physical cash in early 2023 around the country did not eliminate vote buying; Yiaga Africa reported offers involving bank transfers, food, clothing and other goods.
The solution? Effective social protection that reduces the desperation that makes a private benefits in exchange for votes attractive. There is an equally important responsibility on the citizen side. The secret ballot gives voters considerable power. Money can be offered, but no politician standing outside a polling unit can legally accompany a voter into the voting booth.
Nigeria’s fight against vote buying will certainly continue at polling stations.
But part of that fight begins much earlier – in whether families can eat, whether young people can earn a living, and whether citizens believe that what government does between elections is worth more than what anyone can hand them on election day.
David Masagbor, PhD is an economic and public policy researcher with interests in economic, development, education and health policy.
