Beyond Poverty: How Vote Buying Influences Voters' Candidate Choice in Nigeria

Abstract

Vote buying has become a defining feature of Nigeria's electoral politics, yet poverty, the conventional explanation for vote selling, accounts for only part of how inducements shape candidate choice. This article examines the mechanisms through which vote buying influences voters' candidate preferences in Nigeria. It adopts a qualitative secondary-synthesis design that draws on published analyses of Afrobarometer Round 8 data, descriptive findings from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports on the 2023 elections, and peer-reviewed studies, and it applies critical discourse analysis to media reports, academic studies, and policy documents; no primary data were collected, and no new statistical analysis was conducted. The synthesis indicates that vote buying operates through clientelist networks, targeting based on partisanship and ethnicity, institutionalized party practices, and the displacement of issue-based campaigning. The NBS reports that 40 per cent of citizens who were offered money or favours in 2023 voted for the offeror because of the offer, while 55 per cent said the offer did not influence their choice. Poverty alone does not fully explain vote-selling behavior; partisanship, ethnic identity, social expectations, and normalized transactional politics also shape responses to inducements. Vote buying weakens democratic accountability by loosening the link between electoral mandate and governance performance and by marginalizing competent leadership. The article recommends coordinated supply- and demand-side reforms, including stronger enforcement, sustained voter education, and insulation of social protection programs from electoral manipulation.