The lawmaker representing Oyo North in the Nigerian Senate, Sen. Buhari AbdulFatai, has attributed the flaws in elections in Nigeria to weak enforcement of electoral laws.
According to the Ogbomoso-born chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who chairs the Senate committee on ICT and Cybercrime, “since 1960 till date nobody has been prosecuted for vote buying or other electoral offences in Nigeria and this is a recurrent phenomenon especially during elections.
Buhari spoke while presenting a paper on vote buying and its effects on Nigeria democracy at the maiden lecture organized by Federation of Oyo State Students Union, FOSSU, Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, chapter, Ile Ife yesterday.
“In Nigeria, vote buying is not a new phenomenon, it has historical foundations and dynamics that predated the post independent Nigeria,” adding that “the problem with this situation is that the electoral process has been bastardized, degraded and it is often compromised resulting in elections not being free and fair,” Buhari explained.
He Identified the do-or-die affairs between and among political contestants and political parties, poverty, integrity of the electoral commission and and introduction of technology and new innovations to the electoral process as well as failure of the past political office holders to fulfill their campaign promises as some of the factors reponsible for vote buying in Nigeria.
While proferring solutions to vote buying in Nigeria, the political science scholar said something must be done to improve the economy, and that the anti corruption agencies should collaborate with banks and other financial institutions to monitor the movement of cash during elections and abstinence of political parties from projecting financial reputation of wealthy candidates and the financial qualities of the parties.
The lawmaker however urged the students to be change agents by sensitizing people on the need to resist any attempt by politicians to thwart the developing democracy through vote buying and other irregularities during election.
In his contributions, a former speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, Hon Mikail Alarape, urged the students to think of what next after graduating from the university and engage in things that are meaningful to the growth of the society and their lives.
In his welcome address, Professor Yisa Kehinde Yusuf, a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts, lauded Buhari for inspiring the students with thought-provoking lecture and his contributions to the development of Oyo state
”We have been having senators representing us at the National Assembly but there is no way the history of the 8th Senate will be written without Senator Buhari’s name being mentioned because of his immense contributions on the floor of the Senate and his constituents.”
The students later presented an award of excellence to Buhari for what they called his outstanding performance as one of the lawmakers making the state proud at the National Assembly.
