This thing called vote buying  

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY by MAHMUD JEGA

I am not a politician, have never been, I seek no power, have no sisi to buy anyone’s vote, and I have no hope of being elected a councilor in my home state or in my place of residence, so I am in a position to play the Devil’s advocate on this matter called vote buying. Too much ink has been spilled writing about it; too much saliva has been squandered groaning about it, and the airwaves are awash with academics, news anchors, INEC chiefs and busybody NGO activists railing against it.

There is the assumption by many people around here that money is the principal determinant of election victory in our clime and that party agents lurk around polling stations, persuade voters to vote for their candidates, use their smart phones to snap their [supposedly secret] ballot paper to show the agents as proof of who they voted for, and be paid for it in cash. There is reason to suspect that despite all the explanations offered by Central Bank for limiting cash withdrawal to N20,000 a day, the main reason is to curb vote buying during the upcoming election. That suspicion seems to tally with President Buhari’s well known instincts, his aversion to politics as usual and his oft-expressed distaste for money politics. While he partially managed to overcome money politics and get elected in 2015, it reasserted itself soon afterwards when his cult-like following evaporated.

I know for a fact that vote buying took [and probably still takes] place in many places during elections. During the 1999 senatorial elections in Kaduna for instance, my female reporter who was working as an NGO election observer told me an interesting story. A woman called Hajiya Tasalla, who was working for a rich senatorial candidate, set up shop in a small kiosk just behind the polling unit near the Nigeria Defence Academy. She apparently bought the entire election crew, including INEC officials, security agents and agents of rival political parties. Anytime a voter turns up, the INEC presiding officer will direct him to first go and see Hajiya Tasalla in her kiosk base. The person will emerge with a polythene bag containing sugar, salt and possibly some money. The officer will then accredit him and give him a ballot paper. How Tasalla ensured that the person voted for her candidate, I don’t know because in 1999 there were no smart phones to snap the ballot paper. Maybe she made the person to swear in the name of God.

The election observer, who is ethnic Igbo but was born and bred in Kaduna, spoke Hausa fluently but pretended not to. As voting was ending, she overheard the president officer saying, “Tau! All these ballot papers remaining, we want to thumb print them for Hajiya’s candidate. We are all agreed here, it is only this small girl that can cause a problem. Go and tell Hajiya to know what to do with this girl, so we can thumbprint all the remaining papers.” Presently Hajia Tasalla appeared and called the observer aside. She said, “My sister, please I want you to help me. I want all the remaining ballot papers to be thumb printed for my candidate. It is only you that may not cooperate. Please I want you to help me. You know you are my sister.” The observer stoutly refused and the scheme failed, but that was only because it was in an urban area, for that matter near the NDA. If it were in a rural area, they could just beat her up.

Now, our election rules have since undergone major changes. Thumb printing ballot papers and snatching ballot boxes is not feasible now because voters are first accredited by card reader, since upgraded to BVAS, and the number must tally with the total votes cast and is electronically transmitted. But trust our politicians to evolve faster than technology. Since then smart phones have come along and agents ask a voter to snap his ballot paper and show it to them in return for payment. INEC has now stopped voters from entering the polling booths with their phones, so which tactic will politicians come up with next?

Still, I believe the money distributed at polling stations is only a small factor in determining election victory anywhere in Nigeria. It might work better in a lower level election, such as for councilor or state assembly member, but could not be a big factor in a presidential or even a governorship election. Why because, much bigger factors are at play in the higher level elections, regional, ethnic, religious sentiment and party loyalty among them. Personal knowledge of candidates or their local agents, hopes for bigger reward when a certain candidate wins, influence of godfathers, patrons, parents, friends, in-laws and clerics all have an impact in many voters’ choice of who to vote for. “Issues” have an impact too, with academics and NGO activists!

I suspect that majority of voters in Nigeria decided who to vote for as soon as the major party candidates emerged, before anyone had the chance to buy their votes. Candidates have since then invested a lot of time, energy and resources in running up and down the country, holding town halls and open air rallies, erecting billboards, distributing pamphlets and souvenirs, placing ads in print, electronic and online media and debating one another on television. All of them to little effect, I dare say, because the big election factors trump all these campaign efforts.

Money distributed at polling stations, or even in compounds and houses just before election day, do not override the influence of local campaign structures for the most part. It is mostly rootless urban ruffians that are principally influenced by such money. Otherwise, in a settled rural and semi-urban community and even in settled parts of the urban community, a candidate’s local agents use a combination of regional, ethnic, religious and party loyalty factors, as well as personal influence of patrons, in-laws, godfathers and clerics to lock in support for their candidate. That is the meaning of “structures” that politicians often talk about.

Very young folks may not remember the Ibadan godfather Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu, who died 12 years ago. As he himself once boasted, for 50 years since the early 1950s his house was always full of people. Anyone could stray in, eat amala and get a few naira notes, even during the long years of military rule when there was no politics or elections. You think anyone could emerge overnight and override Adedibu’s influence by distributing money in polling stations? Now, there are small Lamidi Adedibus in every community around the country. A candidate’s quickest way of locking up votes is to get them into your corner.

Quite alright, influence of the social media has been tremendous and a candidate can appeal directly to [youthful] voters over the heads of their parents and local chieftains. Trouble is, social media is not as reliable as local godfathers in ensuring that people turn up at the polls. The late Alhaji Yusuf Dantsoho once told me a story, that during the Third Republic presidential races, there was a man in Makurdi who was the leader of the Hausa community, and the community’s elders always gathered in his house. When an NRC aspirant arrives in Makurdi, he had a choice of either going to the community leader’s house, or to follow a youth leader who led a noisy band of youths to the airport to “welcome” the candidate and take him straight to the rally ground. One NRC candidate shunned the elders and followed the youth leader in the name of “newbreed politics,” while another aspirant told the youths to wait while he went and greeted the elders first. When the primaries held, the second aspirant swept the polls!

Most of the desperation we see at polling units, including naked vote buying, is orchestrated not by presidential or governorship candidates but by local party chieftains. They have a reason for so doing. After the election, any local chieftain who failed to “deliver” his ward or local government will be shortchanged when it comes to sharing the spoils of victory. He or she therefore employs all means legal and sometimes illegal, to deliver his ward. If he can get the father of a rebellious band of youths to paste his candidate’s poster on the wall of his house, that is often more effective than waiting to give them N500 each at the polling station.

In any case, pouring money into politics when you do not have the right local structures is usually a futile effort. Political money is best routed through a person who already has firm standing in the local community. Even if he pockets most of it, he still could deliver votes using connections and IOUs built over many years. Despite the pervasive poverty in Nigeria, it is not true that money alone could deliver an election victory. If the regional, religious, ethnic, party and local godfather factors are not right for you, you cannot win an election in many communities even if you drive in with a bullion van brimming with cash.