Impact of Money on Nigerian Politics: Exploring the General Elections in the Fourth Republic

Money has been influential in determining the outcome of elections in almost all democratic regimes in the world. Developing democracies like that of Nigeria in particular witnessed the incidence of money being used openly during elections to secure victory by politicians. The problem is money politics or the excessive use of money in the electoral process leads to the emergence of selfish leaders who used the proceeds of power to enrich themselves and personalize public property for their own private advantage. This paper seeks to explore the causes and manifestations of money politics in Nigeria and also to examine the impact of money politics on General Elections in Nigeria during the Fourth Republic (1999-2015). The methodology used is qualitative method of data collection and analysis where some informants with an experience and classified information on the subject matter were consulted for interview and other primary documents in addition to secondary sources. The data obtained was interpreted for analysis and findings. The paper discovered that there was heavy use of money during General Elections and the outcome was affected by such brazen act given undue advantage to politicians who have the means to buy their way into power. Thus, the paper concludes that until the regulatory agencies responsible for monitoring of elections and sanctioning of offenders improve their efforts in minimizing excessive use of money in Nigeria’s politics, it will continue to produce incompetent leaders and this will lead to bad governance and abuse of power as well as misuse of national resources for private gain.

Keywords: Money; Politics; Impact; Elections; Vote.