I did not travel to Ekiti last Saturday, but the dispatches from the frontlines were chilling. News outlets reported it, and Dr Marcel Mbamalu, the distinguished communication scholar and publisher of Prime Business Africa, confirmed that the Nigerian democratic project has reached a new, quantifiable nadir.
“The price of democracy was N15,000 last Saturday,” Mbamalu observed. “Governor Biodun Oyebanji bought 319,224 of them.”
While INEC officials hailed the poll as peaceful and the BVAS machines hummed with efficiency, the landslide victory concealed an uglier tally: voters were paid between N10, 000 and N15, 000 to display their marked ballots.
Party agents handed out numbers like raffle tickets. The EFCC hovered and the police threatened arrests, yet no one was cuffed. Were the other parties blindfolded or simply outspent?
This was INEC Chairman Professor Joash Amupitan’s first real governorship test.
