by Waziri Adio
“We do like vote-buying. It is essential. That is the only way we have to see anything good coming from the politicians. Anyway, I can vote for whoever I want.”
– Anonymous (Sao Tome) in ‘Is Vote-Buying Effective? Evidence from a Field Experiment in West Africa’ by Pedro Vicente.

If Marcus were a poor man which our ancestors forbid—I should be the first to give him my paper [vote] for free, as I did before. But today Marcus is a great man and does his things like a great man. We did not ask him for money yesterday; we shall not ask him tomorrow. But today is our day; we have climbed the Iroko tree today and would be foolish not to take down all the firewood we need.”
– Ogbuefi Ezenwa in Chinua Achebe’s short story ‘The Voter’

But does vote-buying always yield the desired result? Does it always guarantee victory for the benefactor? Despite its prevalence, there is no empirical evidence that it does. 

With the recent governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun, a new expression has wangled its way into our political lexicon. It is “stomach infrastructure,” a term I want to further stylize as stoma-structure. Contrary to what some politicians and commentators want us to believe, the practice covered by that expression is not new. It is just a new name for an old practice: vote-buying. And contrary also to some claims, vote-buying is not new in the south-west or in the rest of Nigeria.
The practice is criminalized, at least according to sections 124 and 130 of the 2010 Electoral Act. But that doesn’t bother those who value it because prosecution is difficult and possibly not worth anyone’s while. So, vote-buying as well as vote-selling, its tango-mate, will not leave the political dance floor anytime soon. In fact, voting-buying has been so mythologised in these two recent elections that it is safe to bet that it will feature prominently in next year’s general election and beyond. But is stoma-structure the major determinant of electoral outcome? No. A lot, I think, will still rise and fall on context.
Before interrogating the new profile and the utility of stoma-structure, it is important to differentiate it from its more theorized but equally derided cousins such as patronage-politics, pork-barrel politics, neo-patrimonialism and political clientelism. Unlike these other forms of disdained political exchanges, stoma-structure is the swapping of votes for raw cash or other stomach-tailored things like rice, kerosene, and odorless fufu.

It is also important to state that all elections involve one form of exchange or the other. In the ideal case, the voters exchange their franchise for a promise of quality representation or responsive governance. In some instances, the exchange is to reinforce a worldview about how society should be ordered. Yet in some, the exchange is for past or promised favours. But in the case of stoma-structure, franchise is exchanged for immediate belly-gratification just by itself or as a reinforcement of one or more of the preceding reasons.
What this means is that shortly before and during elections, there is an active market for votes, with potential buyers and sellers who have different value thresholds. When elections are about ideals and values, the exchange is also idealised or doesn’t involve exchange of cash or its equivalents. But the exchange is sometimes monetized, as in the case of stoma-structure where the assigned value is also front-loaded. Viewed from a normative sense, stoma-structure is the crass end of the spectrum in the market for votes, where no self-respecting and enlightened voter should be found, for it denotes that his/her vote (alongside his/her choice, conscience, soul) is literally for sale. It also suggests that the voter thinks and chooses with his/her belly and is ready to, for a plate of porridge, stomach unaccountable representation and bad governance.
But as said earlier, this is an age-long, though shadowy, practice that has now been surfaced and mainstreamed by a number of factors, some of which I will highlight shortly. ‘The Voter,’ a short story by Chinua Achebe, puts the age and existence of vote-buying in full relief. The story was first published in 1965 (and later in 1972 in the collection of Achebe’s short stories, Girls at War and Other Stories). Though fictional, this story clearly mirrored political life during the First Republic and the later part of the colonial era.
The second quote above is taken from a point in the story where the elders of Umuofia were negotiating the price of their votes with Rufus Okeke, the campaign manager of Chief the Honourable Marcus Ibe, who was seeking re-election. Having seen how Ibe became suddenly important and rich just by representing them, the elders had to bargain hard and Okeke had to double the money on offer to four shillings per elder. The story ended with a dramatic twist, when Okeke the campaign manager was in a dilemma over who to vote for because he had collected five pounds (and sworn to a fearsome juju) to vote for the opponent of his own candidate.
Vote buying did not disappear with the First Republic. As a teenager, I saw a bit of this in the 1983 election. The ward chairman of a political party that was not popular in our area used to go round, promising women salt, sugar, milk and some money if they would vote for his party. Most of these women rejected the offer because the popular party had earned their support with clear performance that positively touched their lives and those of their kids and it was a time when many people could withstand temptation because they could afford the basic necessities of life.

Vote-buying was clearly there in the short-lived Third Republic and has been carried, in full force, into the current democratic experiment. Anyone following elections or with ears to the ground would have heard stories of money and other items changing hands among voters and candidates not just during general elections but also (and more especially) during parties’ primaries. Most of us have heard of or seen money embedded in bread and distributed in Ghana-must-go bags and in dollarised envelops. The only difference is that the vote-buying and vote-selling are now becoming standard practice that the leading parties are not even prepared to risk the moral high ground. Also, the parties have discovered the futility of asking their followers to reject offers from opponents. In 1997/1998, Alhaji MD Yusuf ran a popular campaign against late General Sani Abacha with the theme: If they offer you money, take it! The spirit has caught on. So vote-buying has become mainstream behaviour for some time now. The only difference at the moment is that the ubiquity of mobile phones and internet access has made it easier for people to document the practice in an unobtrusive manner and disseminate on social media.

So, how did vote-buying move from the margins to the mainstream? There are many reasons, but I will, in extension of the market-for-votes framework, reduce it to only one: simultaneous increase in both supply and demand. On the demand (the willingness-to-pay) side, the stake of holding office has become so high that candidates and parties are desperate to throw anything at it, including emptying the treasury or taking a loan. On the supply (the willingness-to-sell) side, growing poverty, declining value system, declining trust of politicians, and increasing awareness of how politicians have been conducting high-noon heists and how elections provide the only opportunities to get crumbs or ‘democratic dividends’ or ‘firewood’ out of politicians (as made clear in the two quotes above) have predisposed many voters to be on the take.

But does vote-buying always yield the desired result? Does it always guarantee victory for the benefactor? Despite its prevalence, there is no empirical evidence that it does. From contemporary (even if anecdotal) evidence, it is clear that victory is not always guaranteed to the highest greaser of the palms (or stuffer of the stomach) of the voters. So the assumption that someone will win for appealing only to stoma-structure or lose for not is a clear non-sequitur.
I think the value of vote-buying, as well as its new profile, is overblown. I will argue that inducing voters may decide electoral outcome only where the opponent is vulnerable or where there is a large pool of undecided voters. In these situations, the cash or gifts only provide extra incentives to decide the voters or nudge them to come out on election day. Where the opponent is very popular and most voters are decided, attempt to buy vote will post paltry return on investment. My sense therefore is that if you won by appealing to stoma-structure, you probably would have won without it.

More importantly, even when vote-buying infantilises beneficiaries, it unwittingly gives the voters the edge.  With secret ballot and free and fair polls, the voters have more information than the politicians and the parties. This information asymmetry turns the market for votes into a kind of market failure. Vote transaction is difficult to enforce, even when you drag a fearsome juju into the mix. The voters can collect the money and the other stomach things and still vote their minds. Beyond its temporary redistributive potential, stoma-structure or vote-buying as a sole strategy therefore has limited utility, and its impact either way is at best marginal.

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