The obvious outcome of vote buying is that it is gradually becoming the bane of democracy in Nigeria. In a democratic nation, the electorate is slowly losing their voting power by exchanging it for money and other material things. As a result, there is a significant distortion and hindrance to the concept of a free and fair election that ensures electorates elect the leaders they deem fit to rule them.

Since parties have begun buying their ways into victories, people are beginning to find their voting power useless and are instead trading it for material things. Not only are they seeing it as a means to gain money or other things of monetary value, some are referring to it as a means to also eat the national cake that politicians are enjoying.
As much as we want any candidate that is going to win the 2023 general election to perform excellently, we should also not forget that we all have a role to play in making that happen.

Either it’s Atiku, Tinubu, Obi, or Sowore etc that win. The winner can only do well and better if the electorate doesn’t collect money to vote for them.

We should know that electorates are the major problems of underforming representatives in this country. Take it or leave it. Electorates contribute to most of the failures of any representative.

You can’t expect someone who spent his hard-earned money to get your vote. Some of them collect loans, sell properties, and promise friends and family that donated to their campaigns not to try to generate back the money first. I would like us to punder on that for a moment.

So if we truly want Nigeria to be better than this, we all have a big role to play. Don’t vote and collect money from anyone. Unless that happens, we can now be talking about accountability and good governance. Anything outside this, trust me, we will continue to complain every year.

Even if the most honest man on earth wins any political election and spends that much to get the mandate, it will be difficult for such a person to deliver the election campaign promises.

Don’t only sit in your room to insult any leader. Ask yourself what you contributed to the failure of that government or representatives. Answer this question with all honesty, then use this 2023 election to work on yourself and educate your community, town, local, and state indigenous peoples to also do the same.

If we can all do this by stopping collecting money before voting, trust me, there is going to be a great turn around come 2023.

Adebanjo Oke
CEO Leaders Academic Solvers (LAS).