Elections in
Nigeria have always been cash-and carry affairs. The only thing that has changed of recent is that it has become more brazen and opendential.
I was still in the liquid form when that historical cross-carpeting occurred
in the Western House of Assembly but I can bet my certificates that there were
some considerations in form of cash, acres of cocoa farms or
promissory notes (IOUs) in terms of contracts and sinecure appointments. Coming to
recent electoral history, the emergence of fake and genuine soldiers with APCs
in PH under Nwike, the emergence of
Chris Ubah as the godfather of all godfathers in Anambra State, the
unleashing of Oluomo and gang on Okota voters during elections, the
mutilation, and acceptance of such mutilated results by INEC, the mid-night
announcement of results with the
surefooted go-to-court mantra, and
the candidacy and success of people who never participated in the primaries or of
whom nothing is certain, are all
evidences of cash-backed electoral models.
While Nigerians started complaining SERIOUSLY about vote-buying in
recent times, especially after the Ondo and
Osun elections, there are recorded evidences that vote buying had become
serious issues as at 2007 elections. Danjibo and Oladeji of NISER wrote on Vote
Buying in Nigerian 2007 elections (Journal of African
elections (6(2) 181-200) , describing the unholy practice as a form of electoral malpractice powered by poverty, illiteracy and our
zero sum-game political model. They broadened the concept to include
direct vote buying(cash and kind),
wholesale deals with political
elites, cars, houses and contracts for
traditional rulers and elites ( somebody is building houses for judges,
an independent arm of Government with their own statutory budget), paying
thugs, security agents and electoral officials. That was as at 2007. There were
other articles on the Practice and Perils of vote buying in
Nigerian recent elections( 2018) and Vote for cash: The significance
of vote buying in Nigerian democracy which reveal that 80% of
Nigerians believed that votes were bought and 16% were offered cash or goods for votes.
One of the causative factors was seeing politics as investment by political
entrepteneures. In Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and Edo elections, it was like the
prostitutes’ philosophy of old, money
for hand, vote for balot-box and general reports indicated that it ranged N5000-N10000 per vote. Many
people were arrested but I have not heard much about prosecutorial outcomes, despite the fact that the electoral act
criminalises vote-buying and selling with a reward of N100000 or one-year
inprisonment. This is a brief background to the study as I now xray the
bye-elections of August 16 2025 and the Anambra gubernatorial elections of
November 8, 2025.
The legislative bye-elections, appropriately
described as buy-election by one unpatriotic, hate-speech merchant
were held across the country on
Saturday, 16/8/25. APC, which has now become the party of choice for
survivalist political investors captured
12 seats, APGA captured 2 and PDP, a party of particular concern, which
boasted that would rule Nigeria for 60 years managed to get one, in the same
league with NNPP, a local, Kano-based political
party. Two things characterised the elections and the first was
voter-apathy and the resultant low turnout.
Voter turnout was low because people believed that the results were
already written and that their votes would not amount to anything. An APC ‘chieftain’ boasted at a gathering few days to the election that
the results were already written and
that Governor hope Uzodima would be in Anambra to do the usual magic and
deliver victory to its candidate. Another boasted that the bye-elections would be a foretaste of what would happen on
8/11/25. Of course, this was also not a high-stake election like the gubernatorial or presidential, which usually attract much
noise and ‘investments’. During the last gubernatorial election, many townsfolk
returned from as far as Lagos, Kano, Kaduna , Abuja and even from yonder, to
vote. In this instance, even those living at Onitsha, 30 minutes away, did not
return to vote apart from party
operatives. In any case you all know that Nigeria has happened to most people as
evidenced by the high cost of
transportation!
The second
factor was CASH! It was a cash and carry affair because the process has been
95% monetised. Incidentally the two factors were reinforcing each other. Most
of those who went to vote did so because of immediate returns. Obi’s warning that selling
of votes was equivalent to selling their future did not lead the voters to repentance. After the
elections, I met a grandma who did not want to go and vote until she received a
call to ‘come and collect your own money’. She went, collected N5000, (rather
than the N7k that was promised… and she
believed that somebody defrauded her) while somebody paid for her transport and
another gave her N3000 for drinks. Immediately she got home, she sent somebody
to Nkwo-Igbo with the N8000 loot!
After voting on 15/8/25
I
was at my ancestral homeland, Igbo-Ukwu and I voted at the Girls Secondary
School, a walking distance from my abode at Ezeamaluchi Muo Avenue. I walked
in, voted within minutes, and took a seat under a mango tree to observe what
was happening. My first observation was that party-people, agents, canvassers,
et al, were numerically more than the voters. Secondly, these party people were
very desperate to ‘catch’ voters for their respective parties. They were rushing
voters as bus-conductors usually
fought for passengers at Upper Iweka road . Thirdly, CASH exchanged hands...openly!
There were exercise books containing list of certified voters and anybody whose
name was on that ‘list of life’
automatically received the electoral subsidy. Those who were
‘rushed’ and captured on the spot also had their names included in the
list and settled accordingly.
Surprisingly, nobody rushed me, nobody listed me, nobody settled me! When they
saw me, they just greeted me and respectfully gave me a long distance. There were
not incidents of thuggery in Igbo-ukwu but some young men riding with the
furiousness of Jehu( 2Kings,9:20) drove in a motorcycle convoy into our pooling
center, sauntered around and zoomed off in the same manner. The police was there
and did not talk to them.
The Anambra gubernatorial crowd.
The
off-cycle gubernatorial Election in Anambra State pushed the CPV (Cash per voter),
higher than usual and many voters smiled to the banks. Before the elections, we were aware of about 5
contestants. The governor, who was certain to win, APC, LP, ADC,YPP, (which came to life under Paul
Chukwuma) and one Y2K complaint lady who
complained on under AC or so. But few
days to the election, the INEC unveiled the contestants( everything is UNVEILED
nowadays) and to my greatest surprise, there was a crowd 16, including parties I
never heard of,
The
greatest issue with the election was however the open monetisation of votes,
with figures varying depending on circumstances. I learn that the highest CPV
was paid in Onitsha. A towns man said that following the law of demand and
supply, that the CPV started from N20,000 around 7am, came down to N10,000around 8 and he projected that it
would get as low as N500. PO bemoaned the N15000-30000 range. However, the real
twist in the matter was that everybody
accused everybody else of vote-buying and so, who bought the votes?
The summary is that the voters and the votees have accepted vote-buying as the way to go. Poverty has been weaponised: keep them poor, deprived, and wretched and feed them with few pieces of coloured papers and they will rejoice. Those who sold their votes were actually grateful, forgetting that they had sold the subsequent 4 years of their lives.
And so, why are we wasting time, money and efforts pretending as if we were conducting elections? In 2023 I proposed that interested people should just declare themselves as governors or senators or President and let the courts determine the legitimate winner ( Ik Muo COURTocracy: The final stage of Nigeria’s Democracy, September 12, 2023). Now in an effort to further optimise the electoral process and yield better outcomes for the economy, I propose that all those interested in any given post should declare their interest and participate in electoral bidding to be managed by Fellows of Nigerian Institute of Chattered Electoral Auctioneers( NICEA) and the highest bidder becomes the winner. Whatever is left after removing the auctioneer’s fee and other incidentals would be deposited at the Local, State or Federal Government account and that ends the process. This proposal should be recognised as my contribution towards the making of a better society . And to avoid the situation in which monkey works while baboon chops, I have appointed myself as the Registrar/CEO of NICEA. As the ideator, I am the best suited for this posi. My wife, despite being an expert in literary studies, should be the Executive Director, Finance or just ED, Procurements. This is NOT too much to ask for the son of man who invented this earth-shattering idea for the good of the society.
My worry however remains that the auctioneers could
broker deals with the contestants and
thereby corner more money than is
officially declared. I am also afraid that the
people coordinating the process
my loot the proceeds of the electoral
auctioneering. However, one thing is certain: if the voters do not sell their votes, the votees
would not buy. And most unfortunately, they sell the votes for pittances. What
is N5000? Since we have decided to
auction the votes, we should establish a
VotEx( Like the Stock Exchange,) and do it professionally. We should hire financial and electoral consultants,
package the deal properly and offer a
vote for N5m so that my household of 6 could net N30m from each election! That
is when the come would have come to
become!!!
Guess!
What does
this remind you of?
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