A Cursory Look at Voting Psychology

I just got back from work and settled in to do my daily rounds of the online newspapers like i usually do including feeding my twitter addiction,blogs and generally just to keep up with current affairs in nigeria and the world at large.
Then the headline caught my eye '1.3billion is grossly insufficient for feeding-presidency'


Like most people my mind went through different stages of emotions,my first reaction was pure unadulterated anger and then i quickly calmed down, returning back to the apathic and lethargic state of despair which seems to be the default mindset of the average nigerian.
Im sure at this point some will have already adjudged me as being a non patriotic nigerian,others will spout the well used "you are abroad so you don't know whats happening here"line .However this is for for a reason which although controversial, nevertheless is the root contributory cause of the nigerian situation..sympthomatic of the dire political sickness ailing us..

Deep breadth and here goes... 'The root cause of corruption and the main enabler of political corruption and the entrenchement of corrupt,morally questionable leaders are the youths in the age demographics  of 18years old to the more advanced age of 45years old..

I am sure for anyone reading this,especially those within this age range who are passionate about the Nigerian situation you are angry and furious at the bare cheek of a random diasporian youth who has absolutely no idea of the reality on ground in Nigeria.Before i am allufied(if I'm permitted that word play on the aluu4)please bear with me while i state my reasons for coming to this conclusion..

• Are you between the voting ages of 18-45? and live and work or study in any part of nigeria?

• Have you registered for a voters card,and or are a regular voter in most or all of the elections?

Now it gets intense...

• Have you ever been offered,or demanded for money before voting? in political ward meetings,or have been a partaker of the weekly freebies shared at the meetings like dericas of rice,pieces of frozen turkey or chicken and some stipends on top?

Im sure some already know where i am going with this ..

You might think i am intellectually deranged or going off on an alternate tangent,if so please do pardon me and indulge me a little bit, i am writing based on my little experience of campaign and the attendant spending involved. I have been witness to some appalling and mind boggling self betrayal by Nigerian youths in the run up to elections where ideals,manifestoes have been sacrificed on the altar of the filthy lucre of greasy financial gratis.The reason for my assertions above is for a variety of reasons some of which i will outline in this piece.

It is a well known fact that to contest elections into any post in Nigeria,the individual has to have very very deep pockets.This has been the justification/reason why some morally upright individuals against their better judgement or base convictions get embroiled in some reprehensible acts,corrupt attitudes and indulgence and its attendant vices as soon as they ascend political leadership.Manifestoes,moral convictions,ideologies have no place or a negligible place in our elections and certainly doesn't win you elections in our part of the world,the political carcass in the wake of elections gone by will bear stark witness to this assertion..We have not forgotten the rejection of  Anti corruption crusader Nuhu Ribadu, and the accomplished publisher and businessman Dele Momodu and a host of  other modern,morally upstanding,enlightened candidates with sound ideological based manifestoes by voters and voting the present president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan,with the proverbial words now written in the annals of Nigerian political history "I did not vote PDP i voted Jonathan"

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I will not go into the obvious,we all know that corrupt political leadership is the bane of our democracy and we know electoral malpractises,in different guises has served to foist wrong candidates on us, these are facts that are known and obvious,the focus of this will be a view which is seldom looked at.. self examination of the average nigerian voter.

The pertinent questions which would explain my assertions above is this"Who exactly gets a lion share of the money expended by politicians in any given election"before i answer this question with my reasons,i must offer a disclaimer that majority of the figures i will quote are not documented officially hence there is no independent way of verifying these figures.Not my fault but again the nebulous nature of our political terrain,party funding  and the muddled state of statistics .

Back to the exegesis of  how campaign funds are spent by an aspiring local government chairman well the money trickles downwards from the top dog i.e the grassroots politician in charge of a ward to the average voter who gets a few hundreds to 2-3000naira and some phone recharge cards to cast their votes for a particular candidate.

Now lets put ourselves in the position of a local government chairmanship candidate starting with the intra primary elections..(i am using a local government chairman as the test case because its the first grass root test of a politician)

As soon as an aspirant signifies interest in the political post afore mentioned,he becomes a cash cow of sorts to the party officials in charge of selecting successful candidates.The said officials mandate political aspirants to cough out certain amounts of money either weekly or monthly to each of the  them depending on order of hierarchy. Again,this amount of unofficial financial/monetary patronage ranges from a 10,000naira per ward to bags of staple foods like rice,boxes of turkey/chicken which is shared amongst the rank and file card carrying members of the party. This might not sound like much until you multiply this by how many wards will vote for the aspirant on election day.Moreover,party officials will visit  each of the aspirants often and he/she has to wine and dine them and then offer them gifts both in cash and in kind as they leave his/her residence.

While the  different aspirants in concert with their supporters are doing the  campaign round the various campaign areas and party enclaves,they have to part with certain amount of money the lowest of which is 50,000-100,000naira which is shared by the party officials in the campaign area visited.After this series of campaign rallies which might last on an average up to 6months or more in the run up to the party primaries.

Thereafter the party convention itself where the party delegates who will vote in the  preferred party candidate become de facto new brides who have to be wined and dined by the different candidates in order to emerge victorious,they are not party to the funds expended above by the various candidates vying to fly their party flags in the main election.The competition depends on the party concerned i.e a major party like the PDP OR ACN,CPC or one of the minor parties who don't have a good chance of emerging victorious..political intrigues and horse trading between the party delegates on one hand and individual aspirants through their agents on the other goes on well into the midnight until a candidate is voted for and emerges as the party flag flyer in the election.

;note that up to this stage,the aspirant who is out of pocket to the tune of millions of naira still has to campaign on a wider scale now as he is now battling it out with opposing political parties for a bigger slice of the electorate.

Now consider for a moment the aspirants who have lost the primaries..they have lost the deposit for party forms of intent,they have lost the bribes collected by party officials,they have lost the bribes collected by ward chairmen and the voters under them,some have borrowed heavily against their properties or businesses and are hung high and dry where has most of their money gone?to the pockets of potential voters.

The successful candidates whose campaign spending was restricted to his party members now has to spend more extensively,in same format as above but now towards different pockets of grassroots voter affiliates.There are several self styled/self appointed community leaders who have to be paid to deliver their votes..they are youth leaders, yes thats what i said 'YOUTH LEADERS' many of them university and higher institution undergraduates and graduates who collect money from these different aspirants and in the end will deliver their votes to the highest bidder.Attached to cash inducements are the impromptu cash injections to re-cofirm alignment,confirm loyalty which the aspirant is under obligation to do.Voters have been known to switch allegiance overnight from one aspirant to his/her opponent who brought more money in the midnight eve of the election.

Political aspirants will frequent, through their agents higher institutions,student hostels within their political catchment areas and with as low as 500naira to 2000naira each,alcohol induce and convince students to vote for them..

;note that an honest political aspirant,who most times cannot match these sort of money bag politicians financially is always looked upon with derision and will definitely struggle to get volunteers or even garner enough votes.

Now the already compromised voters a large majority of them,youths having being paid vote  overwhelming for the candidate who has spent the most amount of money.Surely it is a no brainer that the first action such local government chairman will undertake will be geared towards shoring up his already depleted financial worth..Not only this but also reward those supporters who have shored him up financially during his campaign.

i remember a confidential account of a former governor in one of the southwestern states who after he won his elections brought in a lot of his diasporean friends and awarded contracts and political appointments to them which brought some grumblings and discontent amongst his party members,when they confronted him as to the propriety of bringing in his strange friends with earrings and designer suits to reap where they have been sowing,with a blank face he retorted that the individuals with the earrings and designer suits contributed a substantial amount of money which they collected from him while campaigning.

I am a huge and enthusiastic fan of a robust  political participation as a whole, and youth involvement in voting generally and voting procedures.i will dare say i am a huge believer in an egalitarian political/voting society however, being a political realist i acknowledge the challenges of a free and fair election in a country as big and complex as nigeria,i am mindful of of the challenges although the prompting of  this perjorative views concerning the nigerian youth is the stark realisation that while we the voting public are the victims of bad leadership especially the nigerian youths

• We are the recipient of a lion share of the huge amount of campaign funds spent by political aspirants in the nigerian electioneering campaign.

•  We do not care nor exhibit the political will to vote on the basis of staunch moral       ideals,manifestoes ideologies.

•  In spite of the enlightened state of the modern youth,with modern alternative means of media,globalisation and a ready template which has worked and which we can lend from, we are still in a state of selfish,self centred and short sighted  political attitudes.

The average Nigerian youth of voting age needs to steer away from the well trodden path which has brought us nothing but heartache,broken dreams and a dearth of positive aspirations and walk in a primordial path of  high morals politically.We need to start displaying a high sense of altruism and a seismic shift in attitudes to voting and politics generally.

This in my view is the only sure way to dislodge the political gargoyles,the godfathers whose financial muscle devoid of any ideology has been dictating the path of our collective destinies for too long.

Ps; these are my personal views but i appreciate any dissenting opinions thanks