Dare Babalola
Former Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has taken a strong stance against vote buying, saying he would rather lose elections ten times than resort to paying to influence the decisions of voters.
Obi spoke at the 21st Nigerian Guild of Editors Annual Conference (ANEC) 2025, narrating an experience during the run-up to the recent Anambra election.
The former Anambra governor recounted how his media aide informed him that community members were planning to vote for whoever paid them, regardless of his prior developmental work. This, he said, led to a deep reflection on political integrity versus fleeting electoral advantage.
“My answer was clear: I would rather lose ten times than buy votes once. Those who do otherwise may keep their consciences; I will not join them in destroying tomorrow for the sake of a fleeting advantage today.”
He connected this moral decay directly to the perception of national failure: “When a people sell their votes, they sell their conscience, and when conscience dies, the nation follows. That, my dear editors, is one of the reasons we are now described as a disgraced country.”
At the event, themed: “Reclaiming Our Nation’s Dignity”, Obi challenged the Nigerian Guild of Editors to lead the charge in restoring Nigeria’s dignity.
He addressed the nation’s existential crises, ranging from poverty and insecurity to the culture of vote-selling, which he described as the nation’s true source of “disgrace.”
The former Labour party presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election zeroed on Donald Trump’s characterisation of Nigeria as disgrace.
“The questions we should ask ourselves are far deeper: are there killings, whether genocide or not? Why the word disgraced? Is it only the killings, or the culture of impunity that allows them to persist? Is it the insecurity that haunts our citizens, or the failure of leadership to protect them?” Obi stated.
He stressed that the national disgrace is not defined by foreign critique but by internal failures, pointing to dire poverty and human development statistics. He highlighted that over 130 million Nigerians live in poverty, over 20 million children are out of school, and the country has surpassed India and China in infant mortality rates.
“We are disgraced not merely because of what others say, but because of what we have allowed ourselves to become,” Mr. Obi declared. “Today, over 130 million Nigerians live in poverty; millions more struggle daily to afford basic necessities.”
Obi concluded by charging the Guild of Editors with the responsibility of national restoration. He emphasized that their role is not merely to record history but to act as the conscience of the nation by holding leaders accountable.
He called for a collective effort to rebuild the nation’s moral foundation and insist on integrity in governance and the electoral process.
“You are not just recorders of history; you are the conscience of the nation. You shape narratives, correct distortions, and remind leaders of the truths they may prefer to forget,” he told the editors.
“Let us demand that public funds be used to build schools and hospitals, not to buy votes or sustain luxury. If we do these things, we will no longer be called a disgraced country but a nation of dignity.”
