Permanent Voters Card (PVC) not Automated Teller Machine (ATM) the Problem of Cash and Carry Politics in Nigeria: What Role for the Media?

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence has demonstrated that vote buying and selling remain a humongous challenge towards empowering the right people who can properly steer the affairs of any country. In other words, the above statement underscores the fact that when electorates sell their fundamental rights to bring to power the right leaders who ensure good governance, they consequently suffer from the outcome of such mistake. Put differently, when voters who could use their permanent voters card to choose the right people into the government decide to exchange their votes for cash, they end up suffering the consequences of such wrong decision. Vote buying or what this study refers to as "cash and carry politics" has remained an issue of great concern in recent time. Sadly, from 1999 till date, studies have shown that most candidates, both in primary and general elections have been implicated in vote-buying. According to reports, delegates in the recently concluded 2022 primary elections were paid as much as $9000 by the two political parties, (APC and PDP) to persuade them to vote for certain candidates. This type of situation no doubt spells immense doom to the survival of democracy and enthronement of the good governance in Nigeria, the reason being that he who pays the highest dollars apparently gets the highest votes. It is against the foregoing that this paper examines the subject of votebuying in Nigeria and the challenges it has posed to the survival of Nigeria's democracy. The paper also explores the theoretical trajectories of vote-buying in Nigeria and expansively provides not only insights, but probable ways that the Nigerian media can lend their voice towards addressing this problem.