INEC Chairman Makes Case For Severe Sanction for Vote Buying in Electoral Act

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu,  has urged the National Assembly to properly define  vote buying and selling, including its varieties and ingredients and make it a separate item in the Electoral Act,  calling for provision of sanction for violation.

The INEC Chairman made this call on Wednesday at the 9th forum of the Anti-Corruption Situation Room (ACSR), organised by Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) in Abuja, with the theme: ‘Vote  trading and other acts of electoral corruption in the 2019 general elections; setting agenda for prosecution and reform’.

Yakubu, who was represented by the  National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said the National Assembly should accelerate work on the Electoral Offences Commission Bill as a way of having a separate agency handle the investigation and prosecution of electoral offences and offenders.

According to him, vote buying and selling has become a source of worry and concern for the Nigerian people while some political parties and candidates have sought to abridge the rights of the voters through unorthodox means and methods that compromises the secrecy of the vote.

"The punishment for vote buying should be increased and made stiffer to act as a deterrent to buyers and setters. Those that commit the offence of buying and setting should be made to pay a fine of N500,000 and be subjected to three years’ imprisonment or to a fine or both," Yakubu said

He also called for the restriction on the use of smart phones in the polling units to be imputed into the Electoral Act, adding that violators should be liable on conviction to a fine of N500,000 and be subjected to three years imprisonment or both.

The Chairman of the forum, Femi Falana (SAN) urged the election petition tribunal not to hesitate to recommend those who are found in the cause of the evidence to have compromised the system for trial.

Falana said: "Where people are indicted for committing electoral offence, if you are going to have a rerun, it is unjust and inequitable to allow the same people to contest the election.

“ It is like rewarding criminality, all the governors who were indicted in the elections in the past were allowed to take part in rerun elections. It makes a mockery because you are wasting the resources of the country by conducting election two or three times."

He commended INEC for  doing a good and suggested it should give serious thought to introducing the use of electronic voting, advising INEC against going to the National Assembly to ratify the introduction of electronic voting, saying the parliamentarians will kick against it.

 "This is because many of the politicians are beneficiaries of electoral fraud. In Section 52 ( 2) of the amended Electoral Act, INEC has the powers to introduce electronic voting," Falana said.

He also advised the electoral commission to consider conducting all elections in one day.