Influence of Vote Buying Among Electorates; Its Implications to Nigeria Future Democracy

Abstract

The 2019 general elections in Nigeria witnessed an explosion in the use of the term “vote buying” in academic and media circles. An often-cited definition of vote buying describes it as “the exchange of private material benefits for political support”. Vote buying is seen as a contract, or perhaps an action in which the voter sells his or her vote to the highest bidder. The issue of vote buying has become a problem in the nation polity and the fear is can the university students who serve as adhoc staff of INEC be exonerated from this menace?  The researcher adopted a descriptive survey design for this study. Purposive random sampling technique was adopted in the selection of the sample from four Universities in South West. One hundred (100) participants were randomly selected from each universities.The instrument for this study was a self - constructed questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into two sections A and B. Section A sought personal information of the participants. Section B consisted of 15 items. The finding from the work shows that the respondents among others aware of the danger the vote buying could pose to our future democracy. It is therefore recommended that political education be included in all level of education and government should encourage all organizations including religion organization to always enlightening their members the negative effects of vote in buying.