TheCable

Adewole Adebayo, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), has alleged that the majority of lawmakers in the national assembly are vote buyers.

He made the claim against the backdrop of the proposed creation of the Electoral Offences Commission by the national assembly.

In July 2020, the senate passed the bill establishing the commission into law, after the legislation had earlier scaled second reading in the house of representatives.

The bill seeks to provide the legal framework to establish and empower the National Electoral Offences Commission to investigate and prosecute electoral offences, including voter inducement. 

Speaking on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, on Tuesday, Adebayo said it is hypocritical for lawmakers who are allegedly neck-deep in vote buying to pass such a bill.

He alleged that some of the lawmakers emerged as candidates of their parties as a result of inducing voters with money.

The lawyer said to mitigate vote buying in the forthcoming 2023 election, the lawmakers should be challenged morally on the issue of vote buying.

“The problem of Nigeria is not that we are sinners, God can forgive us. But we are hypocrites, God can’t help hypocrites,” he said.

“Majority of people in the national assembly are vote buyers, even though they are passing the law against vote buying. 

“And they are desperately looking for money everywhere to buy vote. 

“Many or some of the candidates you see today did vote buying during primaries in their parties, so it is difficult to make us believe that this is an offence… like a strange offence but this is an offence that can only be committed by the political class.

“And the same political class are the ones passing the law they know they are going to disobey. 

“So, I think the first thing we have to do is take a moral challenge to these candidates.”

TheCable cannot independently verify the vote buying claims of the SDP standard bearer.