Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian Human Rights Community, NHRC, has commenced a nationwide campaign to educate the electorate against voting for candidates by inducement.
The group at a press conference in Lagos said it is worrisome that cases of vote buying is being celebrated even with its inherent consequences.
Director of programmes of the NHRC, Mr. Taiwo Adeleye in address to the media said, “We are particularly concerned about the new mode of corruption which comes with bribing the electorate with huge sums of money on the voting day. We think this represents the most dangerous form of threat since the independence of Nigeria in 1960.
It is the highest form of corruption that can becloud any country.
This has been clearly demonstrated in the recent elections held in Ekiti and particularly in Osun state”, Adeleye said.
He said the fear is that the trend will dominate the 2019 general elections and that if it happens Nigerians should prepare for the worst economic, cultural and political genocide they have ever seen.
He warned that bribing of the electorate is the worst form of bribery that can bedevil a country.
“We should remember that in 1999, Nigerians had a lot of hope after 27 years of brutal rape of the country’s economy during which her values were totally destroyed and the dignity of the country famished by one of the world’s atrocious military leaders”, he recalled adding that corruption was a recurrent decimal and no one questioned the then military leaders.
Adeleye promised to take the message to worship houses, markets and schools to discourage people from being unduly influenced.
Also speaking executive secretary of the Journalists for Democratic Rights, JODER, Wale Adeoye advised Nigerians to watch out for politicians who use money to seek for elective offices.
He reminded the electorate that any man that buys his way to office has nothing to offer other than to loot public treasury and those who collected his money do not have any moral justification to question him.