By Law Mefor
During his state visit to Anambra State earlier this year, President Asiwaju Bola Tinubu told Ndi-Anambra, “We have the solution. Soludo is the solution. He knows the way. We shall work with him…” And Soludo is truly a solution provider, as he has proved once again with the rankling voter apathy in Anambra state.
It turned out to be a storm in a teacup when Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, CFR, announced cash rewards for the winning wards of his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), in the forthcoming November 8 governorship election in Anambra State, as a panacea for voter apathy.
For clarity, it is crucial to quote Governor Soludo during the party’s campaign rally in Umunze, Orumba South Local Government Area.
He said, “When we were campaigning for the Senate, we knew we were going to win every ward in the South Senatorial Zone, but we still had some incentives. Any ward that APGA won received N1million, and we won all the wards in Orumba South. That’s the deal.
‘‘For November 8, 2025 any ward that wins again will receive N1million, while the first three performing wards will get N5million, N2million, and N1million, respectively.”
It’s unfathomable how this incentive pledge was relayed as vote-buying and a violation of the Electoral Act by the opposition parties and their civil society organisation sidekicks.
Governor Soludo has, of course, educated the naysayers by stressing that in all democracies the world over, it’s the duty of political parties to motivate and mobilise their supporters before elections.
Mr Governor did not mince words in arguing that mobilising party supporters can never amount to vote-buying, except if the dictionary of the opposition is different.
So, for Soludo to his political party (APGA), it’s a case of if you deliver your ward and LG, you get rewarded.
The case is akin to a football match in which the coach tells his players that they will get rewarded with a match bonus after a victory. How can any sane person call this match-buying or match-fixing? It’s all so preposterous.
I had cause to participate in an interview with Lady Zainab of Radio Freedom Now Lagos, alongside Barrister Festus Okoye, INEC’s former Commissioner for Voter Education, where I duly explained to the audience that Governor Soludo is only geared towards tackling the vexed issue of voter apathy in Anambra State. For instance, Anambra State had a voter registration count of 2.7 million in 2021, yet only about 200,000 voted in the actual election. Quite embarrassing!
Soludo thus put forward a reward system for mobilising and convincing voters to come out and vote. It’s obvious to all that Soludo knows he will win the election because his opponents are not campaigning and are nowhere to be found.
This may make his APGA faithful not even bother to come out to vote because victory is presumably already in the kitty.
Soludo fears that yet another 200,000 voters out of the present 2.8m registered may be loading yet again. It is against this background that voter turnout is a major concern to Governor Soludo. These supporters need to be mobilised such that they will not stay put in their homes on voting day because victory is there for the taking.
Crucially, Mr Governor was only addressing members of his own party and not inducing the others to vote for him. APGA is indeed the only party rooted in Anambra State, and thus it is often said: Anambra is APGA and APGA is Anambra. That’s why the overwhelmed opposition is latching on to straws by crying vote-buying when there is none. Men whose life ambition of governing Anambra State has eluded them deserve our sympathy.
Political parties only constitute less than five per cent of the voting population, so there is always the need to canvas for the support of the wider public. It is the norm in American democracy, and indeed all over the world, where democratic tenets are put into practice, and canvassers also get paid even in the United States. So, why should it be a crime in Anambra? No, it’s not.
In the Anambra case, the APGA Party has been hard at work educating potential voters to get their voter cards so that they can earn more dividends of democracy from Governor Soludo, who they love so much, and are donating money for his campaign.
The party is intent on rewarding the voters after the election through good governance and greater dividends of democracy – and not before and not by offering them money or rice and beans. It’s a simple formula that needs reiteration – if you deliver, you get rewarded. How can any right-thinking person call this vote-buying?
On paper, some 16 political parties and their candidates will contest the November 8 Anambra State Governorship Election, but it is only Soludo of APGA who is seen campaigning all over the state. Talk of a one-horse race! This definitely can induce voter apathy.
So, instead of competing against unseen opponents who are acting like UFOs, that is, unidentified flying objects, Soludo is actually competing against voter apathy. That is the work Soludo is doing since his so-called opponents are not at work at all to compete with Oluatuegwu!
The newly appointed Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, has his work cut out in this first outing by delivering credible polls in Anambra State, as a solid consolidation of Nigeria’s democracy.
APGA is helping INEC by fighting voter apathy through the mobilisation and motivation of voters. Governor Soludo’s promise is a simple act of motivation to energise supporters. The opposition parties touting vote-buying are just up and out with deliberate mischief by taking Governor Soludo’s patriotic drive out of context.
There is nothing wrong whatsoever in a leader motivating his supporters. Any team that plays well and wins its match deserves the match bonus. It is the law of nature and just reward. Other candidates should do likewise: mobilise their supporters with both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Anambra has to, for the first time, cross 1m voter turnout in the state’s guber election.
- Law Mefor, PhD, is Anambra State Commissioner for Information.
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