Canadian Social Science
Vote Buying and Democratic Development Initiative in North-Central Nigeria: Issues and Prospects
Abstract
Elections in North-central Nigeria had taken dimension of vote buying this has become flashpoints, which affects successful democratic development initiative in Nigeria. Elections are the baseline for all democracies. It is the process of selecting representatives in free and fair manners that is free of compulsion inducement. The incident surrounding the process of selecting representatives in Nigeria creates trust deficits that hinder the smooth functioning of democracy, even when the leader can make decision on behalf of the people to secure democratic development. The paper set to examine how vote buying has undermines democratic development to produce declared winner without integrity. The paper adopted descriptive research, which benefited from secondary sources of data from the target population. The secondary data sources were drawn from electoral body, Nigeria police report, Newspapers, Journals, Books, Conference and Seminars paper, Government publication and Internet. The study utilized social exchange theory. The theory believes that social behaviour of people is the result of an exchange process that maximise benefits and minimise cost. The paper finds that a compromise electoral democracy is fragile to democratic development; as such it pushes disgruntled groups to find less constructive channel to expression their discontents. The paper recommends institutionalised electronic voting and credible elections devoid of vote buying to actualise the essence of democratic development initiative in north-central Nigeria.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/13789
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