Voters have been urged to shun financial inducement by corrupt politicians who may try to harvest votes illicitly during the forthcoming 2023 general elections in Nigeria.
The Chief Executive of a civil society organisation, Connected Development, Hamzat Lawal said it is wrong for voters to collect monetary and material gifts from politicians and “vote their conscience”.
He urged the electorate to reject both the “gifts” and the politicians offering them, adding that voters should be the whistleblower, exposing vote-buying politicians.
Asked how vote buying can be significantly reduced in the forthcoming polls, he said, “I’m optimistic that there will be less vote buying and vote selling during the 2023 elections.”
“We’ve seen a case where people would say: ‘Yes, we are collecting these items but we would vote our conscience’. No, I want us to get to a point when we would reject these items, there is no reason, if we have true Nigerian values, we would not accept these gifts or vote inducement by politicians,” Lawal said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday.
‘Declare Your Assets’
The founder of Follow The Money also challenged all the 18 presidential candidates for Aso Rock’s top job in the February 25 election to declare their assets.
“You say you want to manage the helms of affairs of Nigeria, what are you worth? How much of assets do you have? Disclose it and this will tell the electorate the kind of people we have.
“Sowore has publicly declare his assets. Why can’t we have Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other candidates declare their assets?” he queried.
