The buying and selling of votes harms democracy. It interferes with the independence and rights of voters to fairly assess candidates for electoral offices which directly determine the quality of governance and social contract that citizens will experience. Vote-trading only guarantees limited, elections-bound benefits for a few, while jeopardizing the long-term fortunes of the majority. It contributes to keeping politicians ‘off the hook’ for abusing public office when elected, and traps vulnerable voters in self-sabotaging, clientelist relationships with their political leaders. Vote-trading also discourages and blocks honest people from entering politics, because electoral success becomes associated with dishonest and unethical practices. Because vote-trading mostly relies on government funds, it provides a ready excuse for fraud and embezzlement and can lead to widespread corruption in the public sector.
Despite their negative effects, vote markets are a common – yet difficult to quantify – feature of many democratic societies. The proliferation of such markets is seen as evidence of a young, stalling, or deconsolidating democracy, at the same time reflecting a cynical, disillusioned citizenry at the mercy of self-interested political elites. Due to the influence of vote-trading on electoral outcomes, an evaluation of this practice provides an important lens for understanding democratic development and the relationship between citizens, political leaders and government institutions in a democratic system. This briefing paper examines the nature and drivers of the supply side of vote markets in Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy. It presents evidence of the social expectations, norms and conditions which sustain vote-selling practices in the country. It also discusses the reasons why these practices are considered acceptable and the reasons for this acceptance. On a broader level, this paper critically reviews the status of electoral democracy in Nigeria and how Nigerians think about their experience of democratic governance.
The Chatham House Africa Programme’s Social Norms and Accountable Governance (SNAG) project adopts an approach based on social norms methodology to systematically test for shared beliefs and expectations that inform individuals’ behaviours and their choices to engage in or refrain from, or to accept or reject, corruption. With a primary focus on Nigeria, and working with methodology developed by our research partners at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Social Norms and Behavioural Dynamics, SNAG implemented its second national household survey in 2018, investigating the social beliefs that motivate different forms of corruption. This is the final briefing paper in a series of three, providing analysis of data from the different survey scenarios on three separate behaviours: the diversion of government funds for religious community use; bribery in exchange for improved grades in national examinations; and vote-selling.
The 2018 survey assessed the role of social beliefs and expectations in the supply side of vote markets in the context of the secret ballot in Nigeria’s elections, and focused on people’s beliefs about exchanging votes for money or a gift, rather than on the motivations or beliefs of those buying the votes. Notably, it focused on whether people approved or disapproved of vote-selling for practical or moral reasons. It does not discount the powerful role played by the demand side of vote markets; unregulated campaign financing; and the pipeline of government money used to sponsor political parties and candidates through buying up electoral votes.
Despite their negative effects, vote markets are a common – yet difficult to quantify – feature of many democratic societies around the world.
This briefing paper presents analysis of survey data which underscores the critical importance of understanding the social influences of different forms of corruption. It primarily seeks to identify whether people make decisions about selling their votes because of what they think other people in their community think and believe about the practice. The research also shows how the effectiveness of anti-corruption interventions hinges on the proper diagnosis of the factors driving behaviour – is vote-selling an independent decision by an individual based on moral or practical considerations, or does it reflect that individual’s interdependence with their community based on descriptive or social norms?
This distinction is important for policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners alike. Independent behaviours do not typically depend on what other people might think or believe. In this sense such behaviours are unconditional of social expectations. Hygiene behaviours such as teeth-brushing, religious rituals like fasting or prayer, and dietary choices such as veganism are, typically, behaviours that most people would engage in regardless of whether other people around them do the same. Such customs and moral rules are typical examples of independent behaviour. On the other hand, interdependent behaviours are supported or conditioned by the beliefs and actions of others. A typical example of conditional or interdependent behaviour is driving on a road. To avoid oncoming traffic, most drivers would immediately adjust to driving on the left-hand side of a road if other road users (going in the same direction) are also driving on the left-hand side. If vote-selling is an independent practice driven by customs, then interventions to address voters’ personal motivations can be effective. However, if it is conditioned by what others think and believe and is thus reflective of an interdependence underpinned by social norms, then interventions would need to target community-wide or shared beliefs.
What vote-selling practices most clearly reflect is a shared experience of real socio-economic hardship and being short-changed by politicians; a lack of trust in electoral institutions; a disillusionment with the political system; and a shared understanding of the political norms which surround electoral competition in Nigeria.
The evidence discussed in this paper suggests that vote-selling (despite being practised collectively) falls into the category of corrupt behaviours that are independent decisions but are powerfully driven by socio-economic realities, such as widespread poverty, and beliefs about how other voters and elites behave. So, these behaviours they have a social dimension but are not enforced by sanctions in the way that makes them a social norm. We find that vote-selling seldom reflects an individual’s interdependence with their community or a shared culture, beyond the observations people have that most others in their community engage in the practice and the prevalence of informal payments in everyday Nigerian life. What vote-selling practices most clearly reflect is a shared experience of real socio-economic hardship and being short-changed by politicians; a lack of trust in electoral institutions; a disillusionment with the political system; and a shared understanding of the political norms which surround electoral competition in Nigeria. Evidence from the survey data in 2018, focus group data and interviews in 2022 shows that the reasons why voters in Nigeria exchange their votes for cash or a gift are overwhelmingly due to practical considerations and norms tied to certain personal beliefs (i.e. that the cash or gift is the singular benefit they will receive from the electoral process), personal circumstances (such as precarious socio-economic or sociopolitical status) and the powerful prevailing norms of transactional and redistributive politics in Nigeria. This evidence also suggests that there is considerable scope for creating new forms of collective action and norms which reduce vote-selling during elections.
Context: Vote markets in Nigeria’s electoral system
There is a sense in which electoral vote markets in Nigeria mirror routine corrupt exchanges and cannot be understood outside the context of socio-economic relations, scarce opportunity, poverty and elite competition. Vote markets exist within the context of economic hardship and political precariousness in Nigeria, and are primarily funded through the abuse of public office. As transactional and redistributive politics has flourished in the country, the development of vote markets has gone largely unchecked. Vote markets are the reflection of bargaining and competition among political elites and parties in Nigeria for political power which is used to accumulate wealth and protect vested interests.
Nigeria’s electoral framework, which is anchored by two statutory instruments – the 1999 constitution and the newly signed Electoral Act of 2022 – contains provisions to address election-related corruption. These constitutional regulations and provisions have, however, failed to unsettle the political economy of elections in the country. With respect to vote-trading, the previous Electoral Act of 2010 (as amended) and the 2022 Act unequivocally prohibit the buying or selling of voter cards and all voting-related bribery offences, irrespective of when these offences occur. Nevertheless, vote-trading has been a pervasive feature of recent election cycles in Nigeria: some scholars argue that it has become steadily more pronounced.
Following the conclusion of the 2019 elections, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) – along with many domestic and international observation missions – reported widespread vote-buying and -selling across several federal states and political party strongholds. Election observers reported that some voters were openly bargaining to exchange their votes for monetary payments ranging in value from 250 to 7,000 naira. In some locations, voters were able to register their names and mobile phone numbers to indicate their candidate choice and receive payment afterwards. Party agents also used the electoral register to target voters with cash and gift offers. In several other locations, election observers reported the violation of ballot secrecy, with voters being able to take photographs of their thumb-printed ballot papers with their mobile phones – evidence often needed to show a vote-buying broker, typically a supporter of a candidate or agent of a political party, that the voter had kept their side of the bargain. (This practice was variously referred to as ‘snap and show’ or ‘snap and collect’.) Interviews showed that incidences of vote-buying and -selling were noted during campaigning, during the ballot itself and after its conclusion.
This observational and anecdotal evidence of vote-trading is reinforced by available survey data. An experience-based survey conducted in 2019 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on patterns of various forms of bribery in Nigeria found that 21 per cent of Nigerian citizens – around one in five – reported having been directly offered money or a favour in exchange for their vote in the last national or state election. The survey also found that 86 per cent of the population thought that electoral fraud happened very frequently or fairly frequently in Nigeria.
While vote-trading is understood to be pervasive in Nigeria, existing research and policymaking has paid insufficient attention to the nature of social influences which shape how citizens respond to offers of bribes in exchange for their votes. To what extent is the decision to sell one’s vote shaped by individual beliefs and social narrative? Is this choice a personal, independent one, or is it part of a wider pattern of collective, interdependent behaviour? Is it sustained by social norms or other underlying causal drivers? More broadly, what do the beliefs that drive vote-selling behaviour in Nigeria tell us about how its citizens engage with electoral democracy?
A social norms approach to tackling corruption
Social norms are ‘shared understandings about actions that are obligatory, permitted or forbidden’ which ‘govern many parts of our everyday lives, ranging from economic and political decisions to cultural practices and are thus an important element of any social group’. Social norms surveys serve to identify the behavioural dynamics of a collective practice and test whether they are driven by a social norm, practical norm, or other beliefs or factors. The diagnostic tool provided by the approach in this case enhances understanding of people’s expectations and judgments of collective practices, as well as of the role of shared beliefs and social pressures in sustaining them. When these practices are detrimental to society, a social norms approach offers insights for designing interventions to promote collective behaviour change.
Informal rules of behaviour such as social norms are driven by the beliefs we have about how people important to us (for example, parents, teachers, friends, colleagues, supervisors, religious leaders and so on) think and behave, and how they expect us to think and behave. Such beliefs inform what we understand as ‘normal’ and what we think are the behaviours which are acceptable to the people whose opinions and behaviours matter the most to us. This in turn influences the choices and decisions we make. Social norms are particularly ‘sticky’ and difficult to change because of how they shape collective behaviour; are sustained by mutual expectations; and are reinforced through sanctions.
In social norm literature, distinction is often made between the empirical and normative parts of social norms. The empirical part refers to behaviours that are assumed to be common (i.e. what people observe or think others do), and the normative part suggests behaviours that are considered socially acceptable, or what people believe others should do. In high-corruption contexts such as Nigeria, people are likely to engage in petty forms of corruption because they believe that others in their community do so too, even though they know and believe that what they are doing is wrong and unacceptable. In such situations, corruption is mostly sustained by descriptive norms (i.e. empirical expectations) rather than social norms.
With respect to causation, descriptive norms are often more powerful than normative ones in sustaining behaviour, and can have a compounding effect when overblown narratives of pervasive corruption take root. Evidence from the first national household survey in Nigeria, in 2016, shows that most citizens do not believe corruption to be right – in other words, there is little evidence for a social norm that accepts corruption – but there is nonetheless a widespread perception of corruption that ‘everybody does it’ and that it is an inevitable fact of life in Nigeria. This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy and ultimately entrench a ‘social trap of corruption’. Vote-buying and -selling are examples of corrupt practices that are considered to be widespread and an inevitable feature of sociopolitical life in Nigeria.
Sample design
Chatham House adopted a mixed-methods approach using surveys in 2018, interviews, and focus group discussions in 2022 to explore the social beliefs and expectations that support vote-selling in Nigeria.
The survey implementation partner, NBS, developed and recently updated its National Integrated Survey of Households (NISH) frame covering all 36 federal states in Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Abuja, with 200 Enumeration Areas (EAs) per state and in FCT-Abuja. This NISH master sample frame was constructed out of the original master frame of the National Population Commission (NPC) for the Housing and Population Census of 2006, which established 23,280 EAs (30 EAs for each of Nigeria’s 768 local government areas – LGAs – and 40 EAs for each of FCT-Abuja’s six Area Councils). The 200 EAs that make up the NISH frame are grouped into 20 independent replicates with 10 EAs in each replicate.
The Chatham House Africa Programme’s Local Understandings, Expectations and Experiences survey of 2018 drew the sample for its survey from the NISH frame of 200 EAs. The survey involved a total of 5,600 households across urban and rural areas in FCT-Abuja and in six of Nigeria’s 36 federal states: Adamawa, Benue, Enugu, Lagos, Rivers and Sokoto. Surveys were rolled out from November to December 2018.
Additionally, the programme conducted interviews with elections experts, civil society representatives, citizens’ groups and academics in January and February 2022. During this period, three focus groups and one expert roundtable were convened across FCT-Abuja, Adamawa and Enugu states, using a semi-structured questionnaire format. Each focus group discussion had approximately 20 participants (all eligible voters), selected to reflect a diversity of backgrounds and experiences related to electoral participation in Nigeria. The aim of the focus group discussions was to allow researchers to understand the social and contextual beliefs that influence some voters to sell their votes, as well as judgments people hold towards the practice. Participants were encouraged to discuss their experiences with elections, expectations of democratic governance, views on elected office in Nigeria, levels of trust in the electoral system and political institutions; experiences with vote-buying strategies; and the diverse reasons that might motivate citizens to sell their votes.
The states chosen as survey locations represent a cross-section of Nigerian socio-economic, political and demographic conditions. Lagos state, which includes Nigeria’s largest city, and the FCT are the most ethnically and religiously diverse locations covered in the survey as well as having the largest urban populations. Lagos is Nigeria’s and West Africa’s major commercial centre and has a large private sector and elite. Abuja is Nigeria’s seat of government and the centre of political power and government-resourced patronage networks. Sokoto, Adamawa and Enugu states are Nigeria’s first-, fourth- and tenth-ranking poorest states respectively, and exhibit very low human development indicators. While Benue state is considered to be Nigeria’s ‘food basket’ because of its high agricultural productivity, it shares many similarities with other states that have a predominant labour force in the civil service. Finally, it should be noted that although Rivers is one of Nigeria’s richest oil-producing states, its population suffers low development outcomes in the politically contested Niger Delta region.
