Investors reluctant to invest, consumers cautious about spending for fear of electoral violence – Osinbajo

The Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has said that free and fair elections are critical as they are intended to support the primary objective of enabling citizens to live well and access jobs and services.

Speaking Tuesday at the Leadership Annual Conference and Award, the vice president said there is reluctance to invest ahead of the election and consumers are cautious not to spend their savings for fear of electoral violence.

“The daily struggle for food for shelter for clothing is greater than anything else. Sure, bread and butter trump all else. So in our democracy, where today we have over 200 million people, 90 million of whom need education, and job opportunities, who are under the age of 30 and everyone else needs healthcare infrastructure and social services, the sheer size of the sting challenges.

“Democracy, the rule of law and the election of governments through free and fair elections are critical as they are intended to support the primary objective of enabling citizens to live well and have access to well-paid jobs, opportunities and services, or in a broad sense to support the growth and stability of the nation’s economy and social fabric.

“So it is clear that we must carefully craft these safeguards for the well-being of our citizens to ensure that they do not negatively impact the well-being they are supposed to protect, which is the economy and the social fabric of society. And this is indeed a delicate task, because in every election cycle the economy is the first casualty.

“There is a reluctance to invest before the elections. Consumers are cautious not to spend their savings or are bullish on the stock market, sometimes fearing electoral disruptions that could spiral out of control and make business and commerce impossible,” he said.

Osinbajo said it makes sense for the most sophisticated economic actors to simply wait for the new administration’s skin color to be clear. He noted that the potential for economic disruption is even greater if elections for some reason produce governments that lack credibility.

Legitimacy of governments as conferred by the voters’ freely released mandate is an important consideration, as we heard from our guest speaker. For themselves to savvy investors, both local and foreign capital, they say it’s a big coward who runs from the slightest sign of trouble,” he noted.

He further stated that Nigerians know from their recent electoral history that there are too many examples of electoral violence after contested election results. He said of course this usually means the destruction of sometimes public and private property and infrastructure, apart from the waste of man-hours, as the unrest continues and its immediate aftermath.

In his remarks, Kenya’s former Prime Minister Raila Odinga said that elections and democracy in Africa are failing not because a majority of African voters prefer authoritarian, non-democratic forms of government, but because an organized elite is bent on being narrow-minded selfish to protect. interests, has forged strategic alliances and captured strategic systems and institutions of various nations for the sole purpose of undermining the content of elections.

“In a number of countries, we are witnessing a situation where the majority is increasingly at the mercy of the minority when it comes to free, fair, transparent and credible elections. Africans, waking up at dawn, standing in long lines all day to cast their ballots, end up with results indicating that their votes were not counted and did not count.

“Over the past decade, many of our countries have developed modern systems for collecting, comparing, transmitting and counting election results. Many have adopted a results management system that combines traditional vote counting and counting processes with the use of technology to verify voter eligibility, record votes and communicate results,” he said.

He said there is a need for further reforms to make the voting process more accessible and reliable; improve protection against errors, irregularities, confusion and fraud.

“There is a need to rethink the use of technology. Either we use reliable election technology, including voting machines that generate a voter-verifiable audit trail so voters can confirm that their choices are accurately recorded, or we go completely manual.

“Here is my call to action. If Africa’s elite autocrats unite against free and fair elections, African democrats must also unite and defend democracy. We need to build a continent-wide pro-democracy coalition and take care of each other,” he said.

Odinga said the continent’s democrats should treat the undermining of elections anywhere on the continent as undermining the will of the people across the continent.