Apparently worried by cases of votes buying during elections in the country, Africa Democratic Congress, ADC, has launched a coalition to combat the ugly development which is believed may put an end to true democracy in Nigeria.
Speaking at the launch of the coalition called “Coalition for Electoral Integrity” in Lagos, the National Chairman of ADC, Chief Ralphs Nwosu said there is an urgent need for all to awaken their consciousness in saving the soul of Nigerian democracy which is currently at the verge
of jeopardy with different electoral malpractices.
Nwosu who equally expressed his worry over the future of the country with vote-buying at polls said failure to tame the anti-democratic activity will amount to disaster in 2019 general elections.
“I understand that people are wondering why ADC will be launching a civil organization to challenge the scourge in our electoral practice rather than focus on gaining power. But I will tell you that the system we are working on as a country is not sustainable, our democracy is running on keg of gunpowder. Our democracy is challenged and ADC has been at the forefront of saying we must do things differently. Politicians are scampering already, and they don’t mind keeping the people poor so that the five thousand, ten thousand and more stipends they will give them to buy their votes will make them vote them in, and when they finish, we now have monumental corruption that we have in the system which doesn’t bother them as long as they have their homes in Abuja, Dubai, New York and so on. But ADC will redirect all of these by the civil organization that we are launching today.”
He also averred that keying into electoral malpractices by the electorate will amount to no other thing than impoverishing the masses.
“When people running for offices spend unimaginable amount of money, they get into government and spend most of their time finding how to recoup and steal a lot more, so as to plan for the next elections. In this case, they end up impoverishing the people. It is incredible but true that some selected governors deliberately impoverish their people, to make them look up to that N500 to 20,000 naira values for their votes.
So, the ADC’s coalition for electoral integrity is one of our projects aimed at bringing order and responsible governance into our democratic space. As one of the first political parties sponsored by civil society project, the coalition is going to function as a non-partisan body.
Meanwhile, the National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere Group, Mr Yinka Odumakin, has called on the Federal Government to criminalize the act of vote-buying in the country. Odumakin also challenged the civil society groups in the country to fight against the hydra-headed monster in order to save Nigerian democracy from an untimely death.
“Government should rise up to criminalize the cat of vote-buying in this country. Whoever that is caught in that act should be arrested and prosecuted and failure to do so by government will be a failure of leadership in our country. On the other hand, it is as if many of our civil society groups are sleeping over this matter. They owe it a duty to educate our people to know that by selling their votes, they are destroying their lives and future. So, there must be an enlightenment campaign by these groups, because if we don’t do it, democracy is dead in our country.” Odumakin said.
