MEDIA ADVOCACY AND VOTE SELLING IN GENERAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The practice of democratic in Nigeria, like some other African countries, is synonymous with political bottlenecks and anomalies especially with the issue of how to conduct free, fair and credible elections. There is hardly any election that there are no records electoral malpractices one of which is the vote selling. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been making efforts to improve its conduct of general elections through the means of modern electronic devices but it has not been able to address the
problem of vote selling. And as long as the electorates sell their votes, the process may not produce competent and credible public office holders. Granted that vote selling is a violation of Sections 131 to 136 and 177 to 181 of the 1999 Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria as well Sections 114 to 129 of the 2022 Electoral Act, it behooves critical stakeholders to act in good faith against vote selling from scuttling our nascent democracy. Media advocacy against vote selling is very important towards this end, given the fact that a good number of vote sellers need voter education. The media anti-vote-selling advocacy can be carried out through several media platforms like the cartoon, editorials and features in newspapers. More radio jingles like the votes “Not For Sale” can also be produced to educate the public.