Henry Nwazuruahu (Henry Shield), former Special Assistant to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, disclosed this dramatic occurrence on Tuesday, May 31. In a post made on his Twitter page, Nwazuruahu said the bundles of cash that have turned out to be counterfeit were meant to induce delegates during a party’s primaries. According to correcting.com, the bundles of dollars given to the delegates were mixed with fake notes, and it only came to light after the bag containing the cash was taken to Bureau De Change (BDC) operators to change it to naira for them.
Nwazuruahu could not believe that candidates seeking election could scam the delegates in such a dramatic fashion. "How can you give fake dollars to Delegates? You people are just evil," he wrote.
His post has since sparked hilarious reactions on Twitter, with some users saying it serves the delegates right because they always take bribes to vote for the wrong people who do not merit the position they seek to occupy. A Twitter user identified as @drjeff60 posted a video of BDC operators unpacking the stacks of dollars before realizing that not all of them were genuine.
Political party candidates bribing delegates to get elected is not peculiar to Nigeria. It is the order of the day in Ghana, and the highest bidder wins the election unmeritoriously. In January this year, a former Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways who is also a former New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Ejisu constituency disclosed that he paid GHC5,000 to each of the 600 party delegates during the 2020 parliamentary primary but lost painfully. According to Kwabena Owusu Aduomi, despite his loss after the huge non-refundable bribe paid to the delegates, he took consolation in the fact that politics is "a game for the brave". Then, in the same party’s ongoing Regional Executives election, one of the defeated contestants in the Ashanti Region, Robert Asare Bediako, has said that he paid GH¢1,000 to each delegate on election day.
The former Asokwa Chairman, who contested the Ashanti Regional Chairmanship position, disclosed that he would have won the election but his close contenders were the highest bidders. He told Kumasi-based Akoma FM that "whiles I was paying each delegate GH¢1,000, I thought I would win but some paid more than me so the delegates also gave in to the highest bidder and it’s very worrying the trend of monetization in our body politics."Similar stories abound in elections at all levels across the country and across all political parties in Ghana.
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