Effect of Vote Buying in Nigerian Election

Abstract

It is an established fact that vote-buying in Nigeria’s election has become a dominant factor and an alarming phenomenon in Nigeria’s electoral process. Its effects, trends and challenges in the country’s electoral process have become a worrisome issue. Votebuying has also become an accepted norm inNigeria’s political activities and threatens her readiness to embrace good democratic governance. Buying for political posts is left for rich individual politicians due to the huge amount of money involved in the preparation for elective offices. The theoretical framework adopted in this paper is the Clientalism theory because it explains the linkage between Nigeria’s electoral process and vote-buying, focusing on the 2015, 2019 and the 2023 general elections. In spite of the electoral laws and the INEC’s stance on vote-buying, the act has gradually become a regular phenomenon. This makes it imperative in this study to explore the ugly phenomenon of effect vote-buying in Nigeria’s electoral process via its challenges for free, fair, credible and acceptable elections. The study adopts the documentary method for gathering data from secondary sources and recommends that Nigeria needs to develop strong institutions and adopt sound measures that are politically neutral to address the phenomenon of votebuying in the country. Therefore, addressing the menace of vote-buying through political and neutral agencies can go a long way in nipping in the bud of electoral irregularities that characterized politics and electoral process for a long time.

Keywords: Vote-buying, Electoral Process, Politics, Democracy, Political Parties, Politicalactors.

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/14-1-02

Publication date: January 31^st 2024