In ‘The Voter’, Achebe tries to present a true picture of the drama that is witnessed during an election held in a small town in Nigeria. There are two main characters and two political parties in the story and the voters are the villagers of Umuofia. The roof is an energetic young man, who is now working as the election campaign manager for Marcus Ibe, who was once a local mission school teacher and was on the verge of dismissal from service on the basis of a female teacher’s complaint.

Marcus Ibe joins the People’s Alliance Party, contests the election and gets elected. He becomes a minister and his government completes a five-year term and he is now seeking re-election. During his term as a minister, he amasses a lot of wealth, comes to own two big cars, builds a huge mansion in his native village and wins several chieftaincy titles and doctorate degrees. But his people remain the same – poor, illiterate, ignorant, and naive. The situation in his village also does not show any improvement. The same old problems of lack of running water and electricity continue to plague the people and prevents them from improving economically and politically. When the story opens, we learn that Marcus Ibe is seeking a second term and everyone is sure that he is going to get a landslide victory because there is no opposition party worth taking into consideration.

But there is a change in the perception of the people. After feasting in Marcus’ new house and noticing his wealth and power, the poor people of Umuofia realize that ‘elections’ do have a meaning and their votes which they had underrated before, are of high value. Therefore, they demand some value for their votes and Roof manages to convince them that they should vote for Marcus again by giving four shillings each. Some tribes down the coast had set up a new political party called POP with the objective of saving the people from ‘totally political, cultural, social and religious annihilation’. Their campaign leader comes to Roof’s house and offers to buy his vote for five pounds. Roof initially is enamoured of the five-pound notes and agrees to vote.

But the POP leader cleverly gets him to swear on the ‘iyi’ that he will vote for Maduka. Finally, on the election day, his conscience pricks him to a little extent and Roof feels like voting loyally for Marcus and returning the money to the POP election manager. But the oath he has taken before ‘iyi’ does not allow him to do so and there is a moral dilemma. However, Roof cuts his ballot paper in two, drops one half into the box meant for Maduka and drops the other half into the box meant for Marcus and saves his conscience and his life too. This is the story in a nutshell.

There are lessons to learn from this story. We must note that merely naming our government as ‘democracy’ and setting up all the things needed for holding elections do not guarantee that people will be able to exercise their true mandate and will elect competent members to the government which will strive for the upliftment of the people socially, educationally, economically and culturally. We cannot guarantee democratic governance by merely holding elections regularly. First, we must educate the people about their rights, duties and responsibilities in any election.

Secondly, we must ensure that people have the right to recall their representatives if they do not strive to improve a lot of people. Thirdly, elected representatives must be forced to account for their earnings after joining the government. Finally, there should be an authority which should oversee that sanctity of election procedures is not tampered with.

Also, those who get elected are self-centred and exploit the people and the situation to their benefit. On the whole, one can argue that by merely holding elections regularly we cannot ensure that a democratic government will come into place. Secondly, the electoral system that is now in place in the story is not foolproof. As regards the relevance of the story to our own situation, one can argue that it is highly relevant even today. Even after nearly seven decades of independence, we have not been able to ensure free and fair elections, the main reason being the lack of education and moral values. We are witness to every type of corrupt practice in elections.