Ondo Guber Poll: Leadership Expert Warns Against Vote Buying, Selling

…Intends To Raise One Million Change Agents

By Niyi Olutunde, Akure

The founder, Campaign for Patriotism and leadership communication strategist, Don Dotun Ojon, has advised registered voters to reject any bid by selfish politicians to lure them to sell their votes as the preparation towards Ondo state governorship election is building up.

Dotun Ojon who urged voters in Ondo state to stop the practice of selling their vote on the election day, said doing so would be tantamount to mortgaging their destinies and those of their children.

Ojon stated this on Monday in Akure, Ondo state capital, at a summit, tagged, ‘LEAP Leadership Summit’ which was organized for youth leaders, market men and women and micro entrepreneurs across the 18 local government areas of the state.

According to him, vote buying and selling is now endemic in politics and has brought more pains to Nigerians with bad leadership.

The Ondo state born journalist maintained that government at all levels had failed in its responsibilities to the masses because voters had continued to do things the same way over the time.

Ojon, who lamented the high rate of vote buying and selling in the country, particularly in Ondo state since 2015 up till date, noted that the leadership summit would help the participants and even those that were not at the summit to be politically conscious.

He added that everyone would be enlisted as change agents home and abroad persuade the entire citizenry to desist from the ugly practice of vote buying and selling during the electioneering period.

Consequent upon this, he noted that voters start denying themselves basic and social amenities the moment they collect money from politicians before they vote.

He warned that such action should be discouraged in the forthcoming election in Ondo State so the people can get the dividends of democracy and good governance.

“I have noticed that one of the reasons why we have inefficiency leadership across board is people buy their ways into leadership and how can we stop this vote buying, we can only stop ourselves from actually selling our vote on election day as voters, we can only express ourselves, we can only express our opinion on the ballot.

“For example if you collected money and voted for the people of your heart desire or you voted for the people that you think they can turn things around for the people, it would have been a plus for you and your community so we cannot desire a change in governance and continue doing things in a peculiar way that we use to do it.

“And what is that peculiar thing? We are all use to this vote buy and is very unfortunate that we have to come here and make a call in Ondo state because this issue of vote buying became pronounce that this direction must be stop.

“As we are anxiously waiting for the next year governorship election, electorate must not continue in this direction of selling their vote in order to have the kind of the leadership they want”, he said.

Ojon also said that the summit would help the participants to be self-reliant in the nearest future while waiting for admission to tertiary institutions or job opportunities.

“The aim and objective of the leadership summit is actually targeted at the people of Ondo state, youth in building their capacity in terms of what they do individual lives and perhaps people in government too to build capacity from where they are to where we are suppose to be.

“But over the few years now, we will notice that this level of productivity efficiency have actually dropped. So we are coming up with something that is going to prepare people for a new thing, new strategies for the future.

“The Ondo state people are so peculiar, they do their normal businesses in a peculiar way and majority of them love education, but majority of them have been denied this access to qualitative education in the state. So we are actually coming to say education does not really lie alone in the four corners of the university or the polytechnic so we are just doing what we can as a people to raise the capacity of the Ondo state people”, Ojon said.

Ojon assured that the leadership summit would be a continuous exercise, saying “we intend to raise about 1million people of Ondo state for them to be conscious about the fact that their destiny is actually in the wrong hands”.

He also urged voters not to allow themselves to be used as political thugs or agents of destabilisation before, during and after the forthcoming governorship election.