Residents in Kaduna State on Sunday attributed the low turnout of voters in the ongoing general elections to cash crunch occasioned by the new Naira policy.
Some of the residents who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said they were anxious to travel to enable them to exercise their franchise.
They, however, added that they were constrained not to as they couldn’t get enough cash to travel.
Mr Faisal Adamu, 28, a tricyclist, said he had been a regular voter since he reached voting age, but lost interest in the ongoing polls.
He said agents of politicians who had met them earlier to solicit their votes before the election day, collected their account numbers but they never saw credit alert even after the polls.
“These politicians are not trust worthy, that was why I did not waste my time to the polling unit, because in previous years they gave us cash and we voted their candidates.”
Also, Mr Muhydeen Muhammad, an online journalist, said that from what he witnessed, President Buhari’s policy on Naira had good impacts on the election.
“In spite of low turnout of voters which might have been hugely due to lack of cash, the ones who voted would make Nigeria be seen greater in the eyes of the world and demystify history.
“Those who voted did on the backdrop of the perceived competence and credibility of their candidates; rather than choices of others (vote buyers) which the availability of cash would have played critical role to,” he said.
Similarly, Ms Jemimah Nuhu, an agro allied business woman, said she couldn’t travel to her home town in Kachia LGA of Kaduna to cast her vote due to cash shortage.
She, however, said that previous elections at her polling units in Kachia were a strong hold for vote buying, where she also benefitted from cash but voted who she felt was a good candidate.
“If I had gone this year, I’m sure with the cash shortage, vote buyers would have been confused and disappointed, because most times, vote buying helped them to achieve their target through the unpatriotic and gullible ones,” she said.
Another voter, Victor Azubuike, said the CBN cash policy dis-enfranchised several Nigerians who would have loved to travel to their preferred places to cast their votes.
He, however, said that the cash policy had ensured, to a very reasonable extent, that those who came out to vote did it without the influence of material things or cash.
Azubuike said that the cash policy which had both good and bad effects, would on the good side, make elected leaders take governance more seriously, because they worked hard to get the peoples vote and not with their accumulated wealth. (NAN)
