Needed: Nigerian institute of chartered electoral auctioneers

The legislative byelections were held across the country on Saturday, 16/8/25. APC captured 12 seats, APGA captured 2, and PDP, a national party that would rule Nigeria for 60 years, managed to capture one, in the same league as NNPP, a local, Kano-based political party. None of the parties won the election; they just captured the seats. Two things characterised the elections, and the first is voter apathy and the resultant low turnout. Voter turnout was low because people believed that the results were already written and their votes would not amount to anything. Of course, this is not a high-stakes election like the gubernatorial or presidential, which usually attracts much noise and ‘investments’. During the last gubernatorial election, many townsfolk returned from afar to vote, but in this instance, even those living in Onitsha, 30 minutes away, did not return to vote! The second factor was CASH! It was a cash-and-carry affair because the process has been 95 percent monetised. Incidentally, the two factors were reinforcing each other. Most of those who went to vote did so because of promised immediate returns. Obi’s warning that selling votes was equivalent to selling their future did not lead the voters to repentance. After the elections, I met a grandma who did not want to go and vote until she received a call to ‘come and collect your own money’. She went and collected N5000, while somebody paid for her transport, and another gave her N3000 for drinks. Immediately she got home, she sent somebody to the market with the N8000 loot.

I was at my ancestral homeland, Igbo-Ukwu, and I voted at the Girls Secondary School, a working distance from my compound at Ezeamaluchi Muo Avenue. I walked in, voted within minutes, and took a seat under a shady mango tree to observe what was happening. My first observation was that party people, agents, canvassers, et al., were more than the number of voters. Secondly, these party people were very desperate to ‘catch’ voters for their respective parties. They were dragging voters as agberos fought for passengers at Upper Iweka. Thirdly, CASH exchanged hands. There were lists of certified voters; those on that ‘list of life’ automatically received the electoral subsidy. Those who were ‘rushed’ and captured on the spot were also settled accordingly. Surprisingly, nobody rushed me, nobody listed me, and nobody settled me. When they saw me, they just greeted me and respectfully gave me a long distance.

At the end of the day, it was money. The amount involved depended on the party in question, the political ‘hotness’ of the polling booth or the community, and the level of ‘loadedness’ of the contestants or the sponsoring political parties. Beyond the woman whose case I had mentioned, the CPV (cash per vote) ranged from N5000 to N20,000. I met a woman leader of one minor party who reported how voters rebuffed their offer of N1500 and N2000 until they upped the ante to N5000 before their net caught some voters. An opposition in Anambra accused the APGA-ANSG of committing N1m per polling booth, while an experienced politician had estimated that it would cost at least N30bn to win the governorship in Anambra State. The military and paramilitary operatives also demanded openly that they should be settled. It was not a local affair, as a fellow was caught with N26m cash in Kaduna, while in Kano, security officials facilitated the vote-buying process.

The summary is that the voters and the votees have accepted that vote buying is the way to go, and so, why waste time, money, and effort pretending as if we were conducting elections? In 2023, I proposed that interested people should just declare themselves as governors and let the courts determine the legitimate winner (Ik Muo, COURTocRACY: The final stage of Nigeria’s Democracy, September 12, 2023). Now, to optimise the electoral process and yield a better outcome for the economy, I propose that all those interested in any given post should declare their interest and participate in electoral bidding to be managed by fellows of the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Electoral Auctioneers (NICEA), and the highest bidder becomes the winner. Whatever is left after removing the auctioneer’s fee and other incidentals would be deposited in the local, state, or federal government account, and that ends the process. This proposal should be recognised as another earth-shaking contribution towards the making of a better society.

My worries, however, remain that the auctioneers collude with the contestants and thereby corner more money than is officially declared. I am also afraid that the people coordinating the process may loot the proceeds of the electoral auctioneering. However, one thing is certain: if the voters do not sell their votes, the ‘votees’ would not buy. And most unfortunately, they sell the votes for pittances. What is N5000? Hire financial and electoral consultants, package the deal properly, market it through private placement (so that nobody knows what you are up to), and offer a vote for N5m so that a household of 6 could net N30m from each election! That is when ‘the come’ shall come to become!!!

Nigeria, I HAIL thee.