By Oyibo Salihu
Lokoja
Speaker of Kogi state House of Assembly, Prince Mathew Kolawole, has identified the high spate of money politics as the cause of the political woes in the country, and called on political gladiators to always consider integrity in order to nurture and sustain the polity.
Prince , who stated this in Lokoja, weekend, at the 2017 Kogi West youth dialogue with the theme “2019 Election: Setting Youth Agenda, averred that democracy in Nigeria has been heavily battered due to inducement of money into politics, lamenting that it has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to loss election.
Represented at the forum by Elder Ayenigba Olalekan, the speaker who spoke on “Youth and Money Politics, Kogi West in Focus”, maintained that the Nigerian democracy has been entangled with money politics, stressing that an average youth sees the election period as an opportunity to grab his share of the national cake.
“The size of a politician’s campaign ground can be an effective yardstick for measuring his wealth and influence but not for estimating how much people believe in his leadership abilities and potentials. Time is money to the electorate.
“Throughout the world today, politics has become an expensive affair, to the extent that money is now among the greatest threats to democracy. In essence, the greater the influence of money on politics, the less influence the average citizen has,” he said.
He pointed out that the effect of money politics results in unemployment and under development, stressing that people have taken politics as business to the detriment of national development.
