The world inequality report of 2022 shows that an average Nigerian earns N1.89 million ($4,510) annually, with the bottom 50% of the total population making N587,583 ($1,400) annually.
Nigeria’s inequality levels have been relatively high since the 1990s, and is similar to that of China, lower than that of Europe and North America. The inequality levels in Nigeria which is measured in terms of income, wealth and gender lean towards poverty. The world bank in its poverty and inequality report for Nigeria held that 4 out of 10 Nigerians are currently living in poverty and 39.1% of Nigerians live below the world poverty line of $1.90 per day.
Does Inequality Drive Vote Buying?
Vote buying is the act of offering money, items, goods or favors in exchange for the vote of a voter in an election. Research across many developing economies and young democracies have drawn correlations between poverty and vote buying. One research that covers 18 countries including Nigeria, reads in part “that vote buying parties systematically target specific groups in the electorate based on their socio-economic characteristics. Poverty in particular has been emphasized as an important source of vote buying that enables political parties to exploit the material needs of deprived voter groups by trading rewards for votes”.
While poverty is not the singular reason why people sell their votes, it is a very prominent factor.
Another research took a critical look at vote buying activities in the 2015 and 2019 elections and concludes that “the country is practising a “patronage democracy”, a carrot and stick relationship between vote-buyers and vote-sellers in consolidation of commercialisation of the polity. The reports lists other reasons that influence the voting choice of the electorates to include unemployment and illiteracy both of which compound individual poverty.
Despite the criminalisation of vote buying in Section 130 of the Electoral Act, 2010, vote buying is highly prevalent in Nigeria and was pronounced in the 2011, 2015, and 2019 elections. The Electoral Act of 2022 contains provisions that criminalizes vote buying as contained insection 121 and 127 of the 2022 electoral act, however, the Ekiti, Anambra and Edo state off cycle elections have proven that vote buying is a malignant cancer that persists.
People living in rural areas are at higher risk of vote buying than people living in the urban areas, the higher poverty rates in the rural areas lend credence to poverty as a driver of vote buying.
Although the data shows that a higher percentage of men sell their votes than women in the 2019 elections, however, the inequality in the share of income between men and women puts women at a higher risk of being targeted by vote buyers,
As Nigeria heads towards the 2023 general elections, set to hold in less than 6 months, data such as the increase in people living below the poverty line, rising inflation figures, reduction in purchasing power etc. are all factors that must be considered and whose effects might impact on vote buying behaviours during the elections.
It is unlikely that poverty rates, inflation rates and all the other economic woes that Nigeria currently faces would experience such dramatic turnaround enough to improve the livelihods of Nigerians and forestall votebuying before the February 2023 election date. How then can vote buying be dissuaded in the upcoming elections?
Sensitisation of voters on the implications of the sale of their votes is often lauded as a way to discourage vote buying. This could be effective although there is no empirical evidence, at least in Nigeria’s case, that such sensitisation activities impact vote buying behaviour.
A collaborative framework among anticorruption institutions, the judiciary, law enforcement and INEC that facilitates swift justice for pepertartors might also help serve as a deterrent to vote buying. In every election season there are often reports of arrests of persons who are selling votes but there is often no follow up or follow through of these persons’ cases. Providing updates on arrests and prosecutions may be a stronger deterrent than just the publicised arrests especially given low levels of trust between Nigerians and law enforcement agencies.