Police in Nigeria’s southern Rivers State on Friday arrested an opposition party lawmaker with nearly half a million dollars in cash “for distribution” hours before polls opened.
Nearly 90 million people are eligible to vote on Saturday for a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari, who stepped down after two terms and left the country reeling from a security crisis and a sluggish economy.
The race will be tight between three candidates: Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), main opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and outsider Peter Obi of the Labor Party (LP).
In oil-rich Rivers State, police said that during a stop-and-search operation, they arrested a lawmaker with a bag of cash suspected of buying votes.
“Police officers from the Rivers State Command…arrested one Honorable Chinyere Igwe, a member [of the] People’s Representative Council [from the PDP] with an amount of $498 100 in cash in the bag,” said police spokeswoman Grace Iringe-Koko.
“Also return the list of money distribution,” he added in a statement accompanied by a picture of the suspect with a pile of US dollar bills.
Separately, authorities in Lagos State said on Friday that they had found the equivalent of $70,300 in local naira currency which was also “suspected. [was] used to buy votes”.
Operators of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission intercepted “N32 400 000,” the agency said on its Facebook page. “The suspect involved has been detained for further investigation.”
Nigerian elections are often marked by vote buying.
In an effort to address the problem, and reduce the amount of cash outside the banking system, the central bank issued new naira notes in December, giving Nigerians just a few weeks to exchange the old ones.
It also issued smaller bills, making the policy unpopular as most people relied on cash for food and transport.
The currency exchange has left many Nigerians desperate for cash, just days before crucial elections in Africa’s most populous country. — AFP