My take on vote buying is this:
*Who are the people that votes by default*? The Informal People; that is, The Market women, the organized transporters, the organized labours... Largely, these are the people that lives on daily income. They are traders. They target profit making on a daily basis. They are not sure of tomorrow so, they will grab what comes their way on a daily basis.
Because of their personality as a daily income earner, generating additional cash on election day is a plus to them. Selling anything saleable is a norm to them. So far it will bring daily cash. Therefore, there is nothing we can do to stop it until their mindset is diluted through massive participation in election process by the elites- The office people, the business men, the entrepreneurs, the musicians and other group of people at the formal market settings.
*So, our energies should be centered on these set of individuals that are not in the voting net.* We must educate them why they MUST participate in electioneering. We can't leave the faith of our economy to Agberos, market women and conductors because these are the people that elected the present government. including the past government.
*Statistically, Nigeria's population is said to be about 200m. 70% is said to be Youths. For my analysis sake, let us relax the youths rate to 60%. That means we have about 120m potential voters in Nigeria.* Compare 120m potential votes to average 25m votes recorded in the previous elections? That is about 20% participation rate. The question is, where is the remaining 95m people? Why are they not interested? These 95m people is our targets. we need to aggressively sensitize our people on importance of participation.
*If 30% of 95m people is achieved, that is 29m votes which is her than the current voting port votes sellers would have no choice other than joining the new group.*
It may seems tough, but I have faith. We Can Do It! TNEYEF.