Sometimes I wonder if we have become so used to political absurdity in Nigeria that almost nothing shocks us anymore.
During elections, we see politicians distribute cash, food, bags of rice, wrappers, household items and all sorts of gifts to voters.
And sometimes, the gifts are so ridiculous that you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Recently, I came across pictures of people proudly posing with iPhone XR phones reportedly presented to them by a politician.
An iPhone XR.
A phone model released in 2018.
And people were posing with it as though they had just received a national award. And happily hailing the giver "my capacity leader".
The issue isn't really the phone.
The issue is the mindset behind the exchange.
Why should someone seeking political office feel entitled to purchase our loyalty with temporary gifts?
And why have we normalised it?
We complain about bad roads, poor healthcare, unemployment, insecurity, unpaid salaries, poor schools and rising living costs.
Then election season arrives, someone gives us a bag of rice or a phone, and suddenly we are expected to celebrate the same person as a saviour.
This is one of the contradictions that continues to trouble Nigerian politics.
INEC itself describes vote-buying as a threat to the democratic process, and its current leadership has called vote-buying a violation of the law.
But perhaps we also need something beyond laws and enforcement.
We need social accountability.
We need to stop treating political inducement as something admirable.
We should be asking:
What exactly are you buying with this gift?
My vote?
My silence?
My loyalty?
Or four years of access to public resources?
Because politicians don't usually spend millions during elections simply because they suddenly became generous.
They are investing in power.
And if they recover that investment through public funds, inflated contracts, political appointments and other forms of patronage, ordinary citizens may ultimately pay a much higher price than the value of whatever they received at election time.
This doesn't mean voters who accept such gifts are the only problem. Poverty makes people vulnerable, and a hungry person may understandably value what is immediately in front of them.
But we shouldn't romanticise the practice either.
A phone can last a few years. A bad government can affect an entire generation.
So yes, take the picture if you must.
But let's also ask the uncomfortable questions.
What has this politician done before?
What are they promising?
How did they acquire the resources they are distributing?
What happens after election day?
And most importantly:
Are we electing a representative, or are we selling the next four years for the price of a phone?
Maybe we don't shame politicians enough.
Maybe we have laughed at these political gifts for so long that we forgot to question what they represent.
Perhaps it is time to make political manipulation embarrassing again.
Not because we hate politicians.
But because public office is not a marketplace, and our votes are not commodities.
Pictures used are m pexels.com.