AfriPulse
November 15, 2025 November 15, 2025
A new report by the election monitoring organisation, Kimpact Development Initiative (KDI), has revealed widespread vote buying involving snacks, beverages, and cash during the 2025 Anambra off-cycle governorship election.
In its final post-election report, the group said vote trading occurred in all 326 wards, with party agents openly inducing voters and confirming their ballot choices before offering rewards.
Presenting the report in Abuja on Friday, KDI’s Executive Director, Bukola Idowu, described the scale of inducement as “pervasive and alarming,” noting that transactional voting is becoming deeply embedded in the state’s political culture.
According to the group, voters in several polling units openly displayed their marked ballots to party agents, who then escorted them to designated spots where they received snacks or direct cash payments.
The organisation, which deployed 370 trained observers across the state, warned that these practices undermine the integrity of elections and signal a growing tolerance among multiple political parties for actions that compromise voter autonomy.
”Vote trading in Anambra was observed in multiple forms, ranging from the exchange of small items such as snacks and beverages to cash inducements. Reports of this practice came from all the 326 wards, highlighting the pervasive nature of the challenge and its potential to distort electoral outcomes.
”The compromise of ballot secrecy has direct implications for the credibility and fairness of the electoral process. It facilitates coercion, encourages transactional voting, and diminishes public confidence in the integrity of elections”, the report stated.
Despite security presence in more than 88 per cent of polling units, the report noted that vote trading continued largely unhindered because security personnel were limited by provisions of the Electoral Act, which require presiding officers’ approval before arrests can be made at polling units.
This gap, the report added, created a passive enforcement environment where security officers observed infractions but could not intervene.
KDI urged the National Assembly to amend the law to allow security operatives act immediately in cases of vote buying, intimidation, or obstruction.
Beyond inducement, the organisation documented 35 cases of election-related violence, including voter intimidation, clashes, ballot box snatching, and the killing of a councillor in Orumba South by gunmen.
”Voter intimidation and harassment accounted for the highest number of reports, with eighteen incidents recorded. Group clashes were documented in fourteen locations, while ballot box snatching occurred in one polling unit (this was done by non-armed actor, security personnel present at the PU were able to curtail this situation and voting resumed).
”KDI also recorded one case of accidental discharge by a security officer that disrupted voting at the affected polling location”, the report added.
The document also highlighted delays that affected the exercise, noting that “although officials arrived many units around 8:00 a.m., accreditation and voting did not begin until 9:13 a.m. on average, owing to logistical difficulties, confusion over polling-unit locations and delayed security deployment.”
The group commended the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for performing efficiently in over 96 per cent of polling units, with accreditation completed in under two minutes in most cases.
It also applauded INEC for uploading 98 per cent of polling-unit results on the IReV portal by midnight, describing it as an improvement in electoral transparency.
However, KDI said its Ballot Integrity Project detected minor inconsistencies in registered-voter figures, discrepancies in accredited-voter totals, and isolated cases of overvoting—issues that, according to the group, require internal review but do not affect the overall outcome.
The report noted that security personnel generally conducted themselves professionally, interacted respectfully with voters, and maintained orderliness in most polling environments.
However, it added: “KDI notes a troubling pattern of interference by political party agents across several polling units, reflecting a coordinated breach of electoral standards that threatens the credibility of the process.
”Observers documented repeated disruptions driven by party agents from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Young Progressives Party (YPP), and others operating in ways inconsistent with Nigeria’s electoral guidelines.
”Field reports show that party agents directly engaged in vote-buying schemes that took different forms, including approaching and setting up informal checkpoints where individuals received payments after casting their ballots.”
The group concluded that while the election showed progress in technology deployment and transparency, long-standing challenges—vote buying, compromised ballot secrecy, weak enforcement, and uneven security presence—continue to erode electoral integrity.
It recommended stronger logistics, stricter polling-unit standards, enhanced security training, and tougher penalties for party agents involved in electoral malpractices.
Source: Authorityngr.com | Read the Full Story…
