Ayisha Osori, a political analyst has indicated that curbing voter apathy is important to ensure fair and credible election on February 25.
The Political analyst also wrote that the current currency redesign will help to reduce vote buying but insist that there is a bigger problem which is the use of voter apathy to rig elections.
“Vote trading prevails despite the increasing sophistication of scripted ‘do-not-sell-your-vote’ messages in pidgin and other languages, and a formal ban against the practice. And if Nigeria’s corrupt electoral system is to be truly reformed, the attention that vote-buying draws must be put in context,” Ayisha said in his recent article for Al Jazeera.
“No politician can pay off 50 percent of Nigeria’s 93 million registered voters. Vote-buying strategies work when there are fewer people to pay and when politicians can confirm, or convince voters that they can confirm, whom they actually voted for,” she added.
“This requires at least three things: low voter turnout arranged through pre-election and election day violence; amplified narratives about the power of vote trading in determining elections to dissuade “unsold” voters from bothering about going to the ballot box; and politicians’ access to voters’ ballots.”
“Simply put, increasing voter turnout, checking violence and maintaining the secrecy of ballots deserve more attention than vote trading. The 2019 presidential election, for instance, saw an abysmally low voter turnout — just 34.75 percent.”
Osori also stated that a credible election in Nigeria is possible only when problems of voter turnout is tackled alongside vote buying and the use of political thugs to disenfranchise voters.
