By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
The outcome of last weekend’s by-elections conducted in some states in Nigeria by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has continued to attract comments with the National Coordinator of Obidient Movement, Dr. Yanusa Tanko, describing it as “Cash and Carry Elections.
In a statement issued to journalists at the weekend, Tanko described the By-elections as a disgrace, saying that Nigeria’s democracy was reduced to a cash-and-carry affair.
He likened the By-elections as an open market where stolen public wealth was freely deployed to buy silence and compromise the will of the people.
The statement titled: “Cash and Carry Elections” read in part: “The by-elections of yesterday (Saturday) have come and gone, yet the painful reality remains that many Nigerians still sell their votes to the highest bidder, while somehow expecting good governance in return.
Once again, our democracy was reduced to a cash-and-carry affair…. an open market where stolen public wealth is freely deployed to buy silence and compromise the will of the people.
This shameful cycle must end. Elections are not supposed to be an auction block for politicians who loot our national treasury. Until we collectively say no to vote selling and buying with demand for accountability, those who plunder our commonwealth will continue to rule us without fear of reprimand.
It is important to note that Peter obi will always say that those who buy vote are only buying their way to the treasury to steal public money they are not better than the killers, armed robbers and kidnappers because they are doing the same thing in different ways.
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And those who sell are selling the schools their children should have gone to and the hospitals that will take care of them and their families and the roads that would have worked for their access because those who buy the vote are only buying it to make profit from the seat.
The message is clear: we are mortgaging the feature of the children living with NO JOBs and HUNGER in the land. if we keep trading our votes for peanuts we will have no country to call our own”.
