TOPIC

Effect of Vote Buying on Democracy in Nigeria: A Review

AUTHOR

Ugwu Nnenna Jovita

ABSTRACT
Money politics and vote-buying has made election results to have little or nothing to do with the performance in office of politicians. Precisely because performance is not a critical factor in electoral outcome, the incentive to perform is very weak.  And  because  vote-buying  is  very  effective  in  achieving  electoral  victory,  the  resort  to  it  is  very  high.  Consequently, elected public office holders who spent huge sums of money to secure victory at the polls would usually have a greater propensity to pursue their private business and financial interest and sometimes those of their corporate sponsors or mentors and financiers, euphemistically referred to in Nigeria as political god-fathers. In this situation, public interest takes the back seat in the calculation, thus degrading the responsibilities of the elected officials to the people. It is for this reason that this paper evaluated the impact of vote buying on good governance in Nigeria. Another negative impact of money politics and vote-buying on good governance is that the winner in the elections when he occupies a public office that gives him access to public fund becomes more prone to corruption. Hence, the paper called for more  transparent  and  effective  screening  methods  to  be  developed  by  the  political  parties  and  the  electoral  body,  to  ensure  the  exclusion  of  politicians  with  overt  or  convert  tendency  to  corrupt  the  electoral  process  and  the  electorate.

Keywords: Vote buying, Politics, Money, Democracy, Nigeria.

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PUBLISHED

2023-01-11

HOW TO CITE

Ugwu Jovita Nnenna (2023).Effect of Vote Buying on Democracy in Nigeria: A Review. IAA Journal of Management,10(1):1-7.