Civil society organisations (CSOs) have expressed concerns over the possibility of voter inducement marring the 2022 governorship election in Osun State, southwest Nigeria.
Based on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) schedule, registered voters in the state are expected to go to the polls on 16 July to elect their governor for another four years.
In its recent pre-election report, Yiaga Africa said that the major political parties have intensified their campaigns, deploying both legal and illegal antics in an attempt to win the race to the government house in Osogbo, the state capital.
Yiaga Africa said events associated with voter inducement were documented in Ife Central, Ife North, Ifedayo, Ilesa West and Odo-Otin area councils, with food items such as garri and beans distributed to people as campaign strategy.
‘The distribution of money, gifts and food items to induce voters by political parties and candidates featured throughout the pre-election campaign period as observed and reported by Yiaga Africa’s LTOs. This ugly trend is undermining the credibility of electoral mandates’, the report read.
For its part, the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has voiced concerns over use of vote buying to compromise electorates.
‘Vote buying influences voter’s choice from making appropriate or well-informed electoral decisions, which, without doubt, determines the integrity and quality of outcome from an election’, Vanguard quoted CISLAC Executive Director, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, as saying.
‘While voting constitutes a formal citizenry decision-making process by which a population chooses a credible individual to hold public office, it is, however, disturbing that citizens’ choices and decisions were largely influenced and determined by high incidences of vote buying facilitated by politicians, hoodlums and party agents’.
The Civil Society Committee for Anti-Fraud Election Security (CISCAES) has also made moves to create an anti-rigging war room, scheduled to run from 13 July, 2022, to 16 July, 2022, for the aim of monitoring, tracking and countering ongoing fraudulent practices, both before and during the Osun election.
‘This intervention shall compel ballot security and surveillance which will make it too difficult or impossible for INEC to either manipulate the BVAS or affect other technical vote-rigging measures’, the Convener of CISCAES, Kennedy Iyere, said in Lagos.
‘Where cases of fraud or vote-rigging are identified, such shall be outrightly reported to our own CSO-driven anti-rigging war room for immediate and needful interventions’.
Vote buying is an enemy of good governance and a blot on the integrity of elections in any country. It obstructs the democratic process by interfering with the rights of citizens to freely decide who will represent them and their interests.
To the electorate in Osun, you have two primary civic duties: ensure you collect your permanent voter cards (PVCs) and troop out to vote without fear or favour; and resist any form of voter inducement as it undermines the democratic process.
Photo source: Commonwealth Secretariat
