Politics
Accord candidate alleges ₦20,000 vote buying as police warn
THE governorship candidate of the Accord Party in the Ekiti State election, Opeyemi Falegan, has alleged widespread vote buying, saying voters were paid as much as ₦20,000 in some polling units.
Falegan, who voted in the Idofin area of Ado-Ekiti, also accused security agents of failing to stop the alleged inducement, saying some officers appeared to “synergise” with those involved.
“It was really sad to see vote buying everywhere at 20k per vote and security agents synergising with those acts,” he said in a post shared on Facebook after voting.
His allegation comes amid an earlier report by The ICIR, which quoted observers describing cases of voter inducement in parts of the state. Observers also noted instances where party agents recorded voters’ names, issued numbered slips after voting, and distributed items such as biscuits and drinks around polling units.
In some locations, voters were reportedly asked to write down their names soon after casting their ballots, with claims linking the process to incentives.
Speaking further, the Accord candidate alleged irregularities in the voting process, claiming the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) was malfunctioning in some areas, forcing a resort to manual accreditation.
“I hereby condemn this process and conclude no election in Ekiti State,” he said.
“BVAS is not working, INEC, shame on you. Now they wanna do manual voting. This is fraud, and APC is writing numbers. There is no election in Ekiti state,” the Accord Party candidate said in another post.
The ICIR reports that his claims on BVAS malfunction align with field observations from several polling units, where voters reported difficulties with accreditation due to delays and failures in facial capture by the system.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Police Force has warned against electoral offences, including vote buying, vote selling, ballot box snatching, violence, intimidation and other acts capable of disrupting the election.
The police, in a statement after the commencement of the poll, said such offences undermine democracy and would not be tolerated, adding that offenders would be arrested and prosecuted in line with the law.
“Electoral offences undermine democracy and will not be tolerated,” the Force warned.
The ICIR reports that the election is being contested by 12 political parties across 2,445 polling units in 177 wards, with about 1.02 million registered voters expected to decide whether Governor Oyebanji of the All Progressives Congress (APC) secures a second term or a new governor emerges.
Oyebanji, who won the 2022 governorship election with 187,057 votes, is facing challengers from eleven other political parties in a race being closely monitored by election observers.
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M