The Former Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi, has openly charged Nigerians to curb the menace of selling their votes as the 2023 general elections draw closer. He also charged them to ensure sanctity and secrecy of the ballots.
Sanusi had also expressed some serious worries that some of the Nigerian voters are in the habit of displaying their thumb-printed ballot papers as a piece of evidence to trade their votes to most of the corrupt politicians.
Read Also: Why I Was Sacked As CBN Governor, Emir – Sanusi Opens
Sanusi spoke virtually during the 4th-anniversary lecture of Penpushing Media held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
Speaking on the annual lecture themed, ‘Social Media Regulation: Insecurity and Elections Accountability in Nigeria,’ Sanusi said the recent governorship elections held in Osun and some States came with some improvements, saying, however, that vote buying had been on the increase.
The leader of the Tijjaniyya Islamic Movement in Nigeria said Nigerians need to join hands in ensuring the sanctity and secrecy of their votes in 2023. According to him, there was a lot still yet to be done to stop rigging and subversion of people’s wishes through the institutions that were supposed to be officially neutral like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the police, the judiciary and the security services.
These institutions, he alleged, “have all too often proven themselves to be rigging tools in the hands of politicians to undermine the will of the people.”
While calling on Nigerians to be vigilant, he asked the institutions to respect their mandate by remaining neutral to ensure justice and fair play.
“One of the major ways in which elections are being subverted in the new acts is the policy of vote buying and this is a lack of respect for the law on secret ballot,” he said.