Educational Qualifications, Partisanship and Vote-Buying in the 2014 and 2015 Governorship Elections in Ekiti and Oyo States

Abstract

Though vote buying as an electoral practice obtains in both developed and developing democracies, comparative empirical research has shown that this phenomenon is most visible in transiting democracies and political parties operating in these contexts devote huge resources to fund the unethical practice. While many scholarly works have been produced on this subject, few studies have engaged the question of causality/ association among voters’ educational qualifications, partisan status and acceptance of inducement at elections. Thus, this study fills the scholarly gap by investigating the relationship among educational qualification, partisan status and acceptance of vote inducement among voters in Ekiti and Oyo states, Southwest, Nigeria. A total of 983 registered voters were sampled through a multi-stage sampling technique. The participants were selected randomly from the official voter registration list. The result reveals a widespread of voter inducement in the 2014 Ekiti and 2015 Oyo states governorship elections. We find a strong association between voters’ partisan status and acceptance of inducement. We also find a significant association between educational attainment and acceptance of inducement among the selected sample. Voting at the two elections was not considered a civic duty as voters were only motivated by pecuniary advantage they could draw from the election season.
Keywords
Educational attainment, electoral culture, Nigeria, partisanship, voter inducement