By Jide Ojo

The greatest threat to democracy is indifference.” – former United States president, Franklin Roosevelt.

This is not a rejoinder to last Sunday’s editorial of this newspaper titled “Voter apathy: Onus on politicians to govern well.” However, I am using this commentary to amplify the root causes of low voter turnout at our successive elections and the panacea to the ugly phenomenon. Just last Monday, December 2, 2024, I was in Akure, the Ondo State capital, at a technical session on Campaign Finance Monitoring for the 2024 Ondo governorship elections organised by Kimpact Development Initiative, where it was established that there seems to be an inverse relationship between vote buying and voter turnout. This is because, despite politicians doling out money to induce voters to vote for them, there is a downward trend in the turnout of voters at elections.

The earlier referenced Sunday Punch editorial led readers to statistical data of our general and off-cycle elections since 2007. By the umpire’s (i.e., INEC) account, voter turnout in general elections has been in steady decline since the 2007 elections. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, 57.54 per cent of voter turnout was recorded in 2007, 53.68 per cent in 2011, 43.65 per cent in 2015, 34.75 per cent in 2019, and 26.72 per cent in 2023. The newspaper did a comparative analysis of Nigeria with two other countries, the UK and the USA. According to it, “The United Kingdom general election of 2024, won by Keir Starmer of Labour, recorded a turnout of 59.7 per cent. Out of the 244 million eligible voters in the November 2024 American election won by Donald Trump of the Republican Party, 150 million cast their ballots, a turnout of 64 per cent. This is far better than in Nigeria, where the minority elects the presidents, governors, and lawmakers.” Mind-boggling!

This newspaper went on to say that “The November 16 Ondo governorship election corroborated the worrisome low voter turnout at elections since 2007. Voter turnout was put at 24.8 per cent, the lowest in the governorship elections in the state since 1999. Data from INEC says Ondo recorded 42.4 per cent in the governorship election in 2007, 38.1 per cent in 2012, 35.3 per cent in 2016, and 32.6 per cent in 2020. Media and observers’ reports indicate that vote-buying was carried out to the most ridiculous level, with politicians doling out N10,000 to voters with impunity at polling units.”

In the Edo governorship election held two months before Ondo’s, low voter turnout was also reportedly evident. The election recorded 22 per cent in 2024, the lowest turnout in the state since 2016. The electoral umpire’s account says 32 per cent was recorded in 2016 and 25 per cent in 2020. Dataphyte says that Anambra State recorded the same trend: 68 per cent voter turnout in 2007, 16.33 per cent in 2010, 24.98 per cent in 2013, 21.74 per cent in 2017, and 10.38 per cent in 2021, the worst in the state since 1999.

The conclusion reached by The PUNCH editorial is that lack of good governance is responsible for the lethargic attitude of the electorate to the polls. This is partially true, but it is just a fraction of what is responsible for voter apathy. However, before I come to the other causative factors, I would like to drill down on the rationale behind the assumption that the first three elections in this Fourth Republic recorded better turnout of voters. It is not necessarily so. What do I mean? The general elections of 1999, 2003, and 2007 conducted by INEC are fraught with several flaws.

Voter registers used for the aforementioned elections were heavily padded. Accreditation of voters was done without any mechanism to prevent voter fraud. Accreditations were done manually. There was no permanent voters’ card with biometric chips as we have it now; neither was there anything like Smart Card Reader or the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System device, better known as BVAS. In the period between 1999 and 2015, it was easy to have multiple voting, underage voting, voting by proxy, and contrived election results, which lack integrity. Vote buying was not prominent then because all a politician needs to win is to induce Independent National Electoral Commission.