Aisha Yesufu, activist and founding father of Citizens Hub, has opined that Nigerians ought to dispose of the mentality that votes don’t depend.
Yesufu spoke on Thursday when she appeared on #FixPolitics Dialogue titled ‘Cash or Ballot: What should be the currency of democracy?’
The activist mentioned Nigerians should leverage their voting energy to result in significant change.
Yesufu mentioned if votes don’t depend as claimed, politicians wouldn’t pay for it.
She mentioned residents ought to take cost of the electoral course of and wield the facility of their votes to weed out dangerous behaviour.
“Citizens need to take charge of the electoral process. What we’ve had over time is that it’s the political class that has dictated. There is apathy, people are not interested and that’s why you’d often hear people say their votes don’t count but this is a conversation that is no longer on the table, people have realised that indeed their votes count because if votes don’t count, politicians would not pay for votes,” she mentioned.
“The first thing that needs to happen is for the citizens to understand the power they have and begin to punish bad behaviour.”
Yesufu added that residents will set the tempo for political events to observe after they vote for the precise candidates regardless of the cash much less certified candidates might need paid to acquire kinds.
“Inasmuch as even the parties, when they collect as much money as they want, there’s no law that has pegged the cost of any form, so there’s nothing we can do about it but when they put candidates who do not have competence, character and capacity, candidates who simply because they have money and probably have stolen our collective wealth and use our money to buy forms, they get there,” she added.
“But by the time the citizens refuse to vote those candidates and go for where there is competence, character and capacity, irrespective of what party it is or what money they’ve paid, then the party will begin to align themselves to doing the right thing because there is no longer incentives for them to behave badly and still get away with it — but if we allow a situation where it is who has the money, not who has the competence, that gets nominated by a party, then this process will continue.”
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