The Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has kicked against vote buying during electioneering period, describing such practice as undemocratic.
Barrister Adewole Adebayo who was a guest featuring on Channels TV, Sunrise Daily on Tuesday, lamented how vote buying led Nigeria into chaos and corruption.
The SDP presidential candidate expressed displeasure over the current issue plaguing the country’s democracy. “In the Social Democratic Party, there is not a single vote buyer there. if there is a single vote buyer, let us know we will expel them from our party,” he said.
In the meantime, the SDP presidential candidate has claimed that majority of the members of the 9th National Assembly are guilty of vote buying.
Adebayo said, “Majority of the people in the National Assembly are vote buyers, even though they are passing the law against vote buyers and they are desperately looking for money everywhere to buy votes.”
“So it is not difficult to just make us believe that this is an offence that can only be committed by the political class and the same political class is the one passing the law they know they are going to disobey.
“The problem of Nigeria is not that we are sinners, God can forgive us. But we are hypocrites, God can’t help hypocrites. Adebayo also accused some of the candidates running for the 2023 presidential office of vote buying during their party primaries.
He said, “Many of the candidates or some of the candidates you see today did vote buying to win the primary in their party.” According to Adebayo, the way forward was to take a “moral challenge” to the candidates” “I think that the first thing we are supposed to do is to take a moral challenge to these candidates. SERAP asked us to sign an undertaking against vote buying and I think that they should make a ceremony out of that and let it be a part of the process but from the point of view of INEC,” the SDP presidential candidate added.
