A PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION ON THE DANGERS OF VOTE-BUYING TO NIGERIA'S DEMOCRACY

Abstract

One of the essential features of democracy is that elections to the highest public offices shall be on the basis of free and fair elections; for an election to qualify as fair, it connotes that votes must be counted accurately. Organizing credible, free and fair elections are more important during elections than the result itself. The proponents of democracy has it that an election is “free†when all the electorates entitled to vote are rightly registered and free to make their choice of candidate without imposition or inducement. Unfortunately, in Nigeria today the reverse is the case, the result seems to be the number one priority of the desperate politicians whose main interest is on how to enrich themselves at the expense of vast mass of people and not actually to protect the interest of the masses. Vote buying which involves the act of giving reward to a person for voting in a particular way is now raising its ugly head in Nigeria. Basically, the 2015 and 2019 general elections held in Nigeria witnessed a lot of killings and burning of ballot papers. Political party agents were seen in almost all the polling stations harassing the voters who came out to vote, discouraging them from voting for the rightful candidates and giving them money in a bid to vote for them, whereas those parties who knew that they will be defeated by their opponents, because they were not well funded engaged in burning of the ballot papers, violence, destruction of lives and properties. However, the questions that propel this paper are; what exactly is vote buying? What are its underlying causes? Why does it occur in some places but not in others? How does it affect political and economic development in Nigeria? Can it be educated or legislated away? All these questions constitute the problems that this paper tends to reflect on to know why Nigerians have been so unlucky to elect the leaders of their choice and why there have never been a free, fair and credible election since the democracy emerges in Nigeria. This paper argues that offering money, goods or services to induce voters to vote for a particular candidate makes the electorate to vote for the wrong leaders whose mission is not for the common good of the masses, but rather to embezzle the public funds for their selfish interests. This paper employs the method of hermeneutic and concludes by suggesting that for Nigeria to have true democratic system that geared towards the common good of the people all forms of electoral practices including vote buying must be abolished.