Obedient Movement Decries Alleged Vote Trading After By-election Defeat

The Obedient Movement, a political support group allied with Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, has decried what it describes as vote for cash elections following disappointing results in last Saturday’s by-elections across Nigeria.

In an emotionally charged statement titled: Cash and Carry Election, released on Monday, the group’s national coordinator Dr. Yunusa Tanko accused politicians of turning Nigeria’s democracy into “an open market where stolen public wealth buys silence and compromises the people’s will.

Tanko lamented that “many Nigerians still sell their votes to the highest bidder, while somehow expecting good governance in return.”

He reserved particular criticism for vote buyers, whom he likened to criminals: “Those who buy votes are only buying their way to the treasury to steal public money. They are not better than killers, armed robbers, and kidnappers because they are doing the same thing in different ways.”

The Movement saved equally harsh words for citizens who accept payments, warning they are “selling the schools their children should have gone to, the hospitals that will take care of them and their families, and the roads that would have worked for their access.”

The group argued this short-term transactional politics perpetuates national decline: “If we keep trading our votes for peanuts, we will have no country to call our own.”

These allegations followed Saturday’s by-election results for opposition parties on 16 August, where the ruling APC swept all 11 out of the 16 contested seats – including in Labour Party strongholds like Anambra’s Nnewi North constituency.

The Obedient Movement’s statement concluded with a call to action: “This shameful cycle must end. Until we collectively say no to vote selling and buying with demand for accountability, those who plunder our commonwealth will continue to rule us without fear of reprimand.” The group pledged to launch nationwide voter education campaigns ahead of upcoming governorship elections.

The 16 August by-elections filled six federal and nine state legislative seats across 13 states.