“Some People Need Killing”: What Nigeria Can Learn From a Democracy That Voted for Its Own Destruction

Nigeria’s democracy faces difficult questions over vote-buying, political patronage and the choices citizens make at the ballot box.

Patricia Evangelista’s account of the Philippines offers a disturbing question for Nigeria: what happens when citizens use democracy to empower the very forces they later complain about?

There are book titles that make you uncomfortable before you even turn the first page. Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country is one of them. At first glance, the title sounds like an endorsement of violence. In reality, it is a deeply disturbing examination of how violence became normalised under former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and how an elected government could persuade large sections of society to accept the idea that certain people were disposable.

Evangelista, an investigative journalist, spent years documenting the killings associated with Duterte’s brutal war on drugs. She followed the families left behind, spoke to survivors, investigated the actions of police and vigilantes, and examined the political environment that made the violence possible. But beneath the stories of murder lies a much larger question about democracy: How does a society arrive at the point where human lives can be sacrificed in exchange for the promise of security, order or political convenience? And perhaps even more uncomfortably, what responsibility do ordinary citizens bear when they give political power to people who eventually use that power against the very society that elected them?

That question may sound distant from Nigeria, but it should not.

Nigeria is not the Philippines. Our political history, institutions, ethnic composition, security challenges and democratic experience are different. There is no responsible argument for treating the two countries as identical. Yet the broader warning in Evangelista’s work travels well beyond the Philippines because it concerns something universal: the vulnerability of democracy when citizens become willing to exchange long-term values for immediate benefits.

And after the August 15, 2026 governorship election in Osun State, that question deserves a serious national conversation.

When the ballot becomes a marketplace

An election is supposed to be the moment when citizens decide who deserves the authority to govern them. It is supposed to be a contest of ideas, records, competence, character and vision. In reality, Nigerian elections have increasingly become entangled with money, patronage and political machinery. The question confronting a voter is sometimes no longer simply, “Who can govern this state?” but also, “What can I get before I cast my vote?”

The reports surrounding the Osun election have once again placed this problem in the spotlight. Civil society observers raised concerns about alleged vote-buying, security threats and technical difficulties with the electoral process, while election-day reports documented incidents of violence and disruption, including an incident in Ejigbo where voting was reportedly interrupted. These allegations and incidents deserve proper investigation rather than partisan interpretation, but their recurrence tells us something important about the condition of Nigerian elections.

A democracy becomes vulnerable when the ballot begins to look like a commodity.

For a politician, an election is an investment in power. For a citizen struggling to survive, however, the calculation can be completely different. A politician may be thinking about the next four years while a hungry voter is thinking about dinner tonight. The politician arrives with cash, food, transport money or a promise of patronage, while the voter faces the reality of rising costs, unemployment, school fees and an uncertain tomorrow. It is easy for those who are comfortable to condemn the person who accepts the money, but it is harder to understand the desperation that makes the offer attractive.

That does not make vote-buying acceptable. It explains why it works.

And that distinction matters.

The cruel mathematics of poverty

There is a painful contradiction at the heart of Nigeria’s electoral politics: poverty can make citizens vulnerable to the very politicians whose governance may perpetuate that poverty.

A parent who cannot afford school fees may naturally be more concerned about the money offered today than a five-year education policy. A young person without employment may pay greater attention to transport money or a promise of a job than to a carefully written economic manifesto. A family struggling to put food on the table may not have the luxury of thinking only about institutional reform and long-term development.

This is why simply telling poor Nigerians to “stop selling their votes” is not enough. The problem is deeper than morality. It is economic, political and structural.

When people are kept in a state of permanent vulnerability, survival becomes a political instrument. Temporary relief can be presented as generosity. Political patronage can be presented as empowerment. Handouts can be presented as evidence that a candidate “cares.”

But there is a difference between helping citizens and making citizens dependent.

A politician who gives a voter money during an election may solve a problem for that person for a day. The government that follows, however, has the power to determine whether that person will still be struggling four years later.

And that is where the transaction becomes painfully unequal.

The money finishes.

The government remains.

What exactly are we selling?

Perhaps Nigerians should begin looking at vote-buying from the other end of the transaction.

We spend hours discussing how much a politician is offering. We ask whether the money is ₦5,000, ₦10,000, ₦20,000 or more. We discuss food items, transport fares and other inducements. But we rarely stop to calculate what the vote itself is worth.

A governor does not receive four years of power because of the money handed to a voter at a polling unit. The governor receives control over public resources, appointments, policies, infrastructure, education, healthcare and the direction of an entire state.

The voter may receive ₦10,000.

The politician may receive access to billions.

That is not an equal exchange.

It is perhaps one of the worst bargains citizens can make.

We sell something that can influence our lives for four years in exchange for something that may last four days.

Then, when the consequences arrive, we ask why government has failed.

The candidate with the better idea

There is another dimension of this problem that deserves attention: the fate of candidates who attempt to compete on ideas.

Nigeria has intelligent people with credible policy proposals. There are candidates who genuinely want to discuss education, healthcare, security, employment, infrastructure, agriculture, taxation and institutional reform. There are politicians who want voters to examine their records and programmes before making a decision.

But ideas can be difficult to hear in an environment dominated by money and political structures.

The candidate with the strongest manifesto may not have the biggest political machine. The candidate with the clearest economic plan may not have the resources to mobilise thousands of people. The candidate with a record of competence may struggle to compete with someone whose campaign can distribute money and build a larger network of political loyalty.

This does not mean that every candidate with money is corrupt or that every voter who supports a major political party is unintelligent. It means that our electoral environment can make the competition increasingly unequal.

When money becomes the dominant language of politics, ideas are forced to compete on the wrong playing field.

The politician begins asking how much it will cost to win rather than what it will take to govern well. The voter begins asking what the candidate can give rather than what the candidate can build.

Slowly, democracy changes from a contest over the future into a marketplace for political transactions.

The lesson hidden inside Evangelista’s book

This is where Some People Need Killing becomes relevant to Nigeria.

The lesson is not that Nigerians are about to experience Duterte’s Philippines. There is no basis for such a simplistic comparison. The lesson is that democracies can weaken when citizens gradually become comfortable with sacrificing principles for immediate political benefits.

Duterte rose within a democratic system by appealing to fear, anger and frustration. His promise of decisive action against crime and drugs resonated with people who felt that the existing system had failed them. Evangelista’s reporting shows the devastating consequences of what followed and forces readers to examine not only the actions of those who carried out the killings but also the political culture that made such violence possible.

The Nigerian version of this warning may look different. It may not be a drug war. It may be the normalisation of corruption, electoral violence, impunity, institutional weakness or the belief that our preferred politician should be defended regardless of what that politician does.

The common thread is the willingness to sacrifice principles for political convenience.

Once citizens begin saying, “Yes, our politician is doing something wrong, but at least he is our politician,” accountability begins to disappear.

And when accountability disappears, democracy becomes an empty shell.

We complain about the government we helped create

There is a painful cycle in Nigerian politics that we rarely confront honestly. We complain about unemployment, then return to politicians who have failed to create opportunities. We complain about the cost of living, then accept short-term campaign gifts without asking what economic policies will reduce poverty. We complain about bad roads, hospitals and schools, yet sometimes allow temporary political inducements to influence the very election that determines who controls those services.

This is not to say that voters are solely responsible for bad governance. Politicians who buy votes carry responsibility. Political parties that encourage patronage carry responsibility. Electoral institutions and security agencies have responsibilities. The justice system has responsibilities. Wealthy financiers who turn elections into investments have responsibilities.

But citizens also have responsibility.

Democracy gives voters enormous power, and that power comes with consequences.

The uncomfortable question, therefore, is not simply, “Why are our politicians bad?”

It is also:

Why do we continue giving bad politics the opportunity to succeed?

When survival becomes a political trap

There is no easy answer because the Nigerian voter is often trapped between principle and survival.

It is unfair to tell someone who has not eaten to think only about tomorrow. But it is equally dangerous to pretend that today’s hardship disappears simply because a politician offers temporary relief.

Perhaps the real failure is that Nigerian democracy has not yet succeeded in creating the economic conditions in which citizens can make political decisions without desperation influencing those decisions.

A truly functioning democracy should not require a hungry person to choose between feeding their family and protecting their political future.

That is why the fight against vote-buying cannot be separated from the fight against poverty.

If we want citizens to reject political inducement, we must also build a society where citizens are less vulnerable to it.

But citizens must also recognise the trap.

The ₦10,000 may solve today’s problem.

It cannot build the hospital you will need tomorrow.

It cannot fix the road your business depends on.

It cannot create the job your child will need after graduation.

It cannot reform a school system.

It cannot secure a community.

It cannot run a state.

A vote can influence all of those things.

The ballot is an act of trust

Perhaps this is the most important thing Nigerians need to remember before the next election: a vote is not simply a personal possession.

It is an act of trust.

When you vote for a governor, you are giving that person authority over public money and public institutions. You are allowing that person to influence the quality of education your children receive, the healthcare available to your family, the roads around your community, the security of your neighbourhood and the economic environment in which your business operates.

That authority is worth far more than whatever can fit inside an envelope.

So instead of asking, “How much is this candidate giving me?” perhaps the more important question is:

“What will this candidate cost me if I give them power?”

That question forces us to think beyond election day.

Democracy rarely announces its own decline

The most dangerous thing about democratic decline is that it does not always look dramatic.

There may be no tanks in the streets.

No soldiers may seize the television stations.

No constitution may be formally suspended.

Sometimes democracy simply becomes weaker one compromise at a time.

Citizens become tired.

Corruption becomes normal.

Vote-buying becomes expected.

Political violence becomes something people discuss as though it were unavoidable.

Institutions lose credibility.

Politicians stop fearing accountability.

Voters stop believing their choices matter.

Eventually, the buildings of democracy remain standing, but the principles inside them have become hollow.

That is the warning Nigerians should take seriously.

Not that democracy is useless.

Not that voters are stupid.

Not that Nigeria is the Philippines.

Rather, that democracy survives only when citizens take the responsibility of citizenship as seriously as they take the right to vote.

What happens when we vote against our future?

The Osun election should therefore not be treated merely as another political contest whose winner will eventually occupy the governor’s office.

It should provoke a broader conversation about the kind of democracy Nigerians are building.

Are we building a democracy where competence can compete with money?

Are we creating an environment where a poor voter can exercise political freedom without being forced to choose between today’s hunger and tomorrow’s governance?

Are political parties producing leaders with ideas, or simply candidates with structures?

And are voters choosing leaders based on what they can build, or what they can distribute?

These questions matter far beyond Osun.

They matter because Nigeria is already looking toward another major electoral cycle.

And if the lessons of every election are forgotten immediately after the results are announced, the same problems will return wearing different colours.

Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing is ultimately a story about people, power and the consequences of allowing political promises to override human dignity. Nigeria’s story is different, but the democratic warning is familiar: the people do not merely live under the leaders they elect; they help determine who gets the power to lead them.

That is why the ballot deserves more respect than a temporary handout.

The money collected on election day will disappear. The food will be eaten. The posters will come down. The campaign music will stop.

The government will remain.

And if that government fails, the consequences will not be paid by the politician alone. They will be paid by the same citizens who travel the bad roads, visit the hospitals, send children to schools, search for jobs and struggle to survive under the policies of the government they helped create.

Perhaps that is the question Nigeria needs to ask itself before the next election:

Are our politicians stealing our future from us, or are we repeatedly handing it to them in exchange for a little relief today?

And perhaps the most frightening possibility is not that democracy will be taken away from Nigerians.

It is that Nigerians may continue having the freedom to vote-and use that freedom to vote against themselves.

Credited: Ayodeji Olalekan Ayobami (@ayodareporter)