Vote Buying During 2015 And 2019 General Elections: Manifestation and Implications on Democratic Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Vote-buying is a contentious issue in contemporary discourse on the sustainability of democratic development in Nigeria. This menace is gradually crippling electoral processes and undermining the efforts of the electoral umpire in conducting competitive, free, fair, and credible elections for the sustenance of democratic development in Nigeria. The study, therefore, investigates the effects of vote-buying on the sustainability of democratic development and good governance in Nigeria. It argues that vote-buying compromises the well-being of the populace by entrenching bad governance and poor service delivery. The study adopts reciprocal determinism theory to illustrate how the political environment and bad governance are stimuli to consolidating the commercialisation of Nigerian electoral processes. The study adopts the documentary method for gathering data from secondary sources and recommends institutionalisation of a strong electoral management body to enforce a stiff penalty for commercialisation of the electoral system in Nigeria.

Keywords

• Vote-buying
• democratic development
• good governance
• political stability