•Says passage of Electoral Offences Bill into law long overdue

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has expressed deep worry over the continued delay of the passage of the Bill for an Act to establish the National Electoral Offences Commission.

Yakubu said the passage of the bill into law is long overdue, adding: “I hope in the next few months, the National Assembly will pass the Bill so that it will not suffer the fate of previous efforts which were inchoate at the end of the lifespan of the Assembly.

“The Commission would like to see more successful prosecution of offenders, not just ballot box snatchers, falsifiers of election results and vote buyers at polling units but most importantly, their sponsors. We look forward to the day when highly placed sponsors of thuggery, including high-profile figures that seek to benefit from these violations, are arrested and prosecuted. We believe the work of the proposed Commission will help in this regard,” he stated.

The INEC Chairman noted this in his remarks at the Public Hearing organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters, in Abuja, on Tuesday.

Yakubu emphasised that the National Electoral Offences Commission Bill is a critical legislation, saying: “It has been part of all national conversations on constitutional and electoral reforms for the last 13 years.

“The Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on electoral reforms recommended it in 2009, echoed by the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu Committee following the post-election violence of 2011 and, most recently, by the Senator Ken Nnamani Committee on Constitutional and Electoral Reform in 2017. Similar recommendations are contained in reports of police investigations, INEC administrative enquiries, court judgments, reports by the National Human Rights Commission as well as several accredited election observers,” he said.

According to him, “It is clear that the reform of our electoral process cannot be complete without effective sanctions on violators of our laws.

At present, INEC is saddled with the responsibility of prosecuting electoral offenders under the Electoral Act. This has been very challenging for the Commission. For instance, since the 2015 General Election, 125 cases of electoral offences were filed in various Courts out of which 60 convictions have been secured so far, including the most recent one in Akwa Ibom State.

“However, much as the Commission would like to see more successful prosecution of offenders, our effort is hampered by obvious constraints. INEC is basically an electoral commission with extensive responsibilities which include the registration and regulation of political parties, the monitoring of party and campaign finance, their primaries, congresses, meetings and conventions; nationwide Continuous Voter registration (CVR) and the maintenance of the national register of voters; creation of polling units; delimitation of electoral constituencies; voter education and publicity; management of electoral logistics; recruitment, training and deployment of election duty officials. Other responsibilities include the conduct of numerous off-cycle and bye-elections; new innovations to promote inclusivity and electoral integrity; election security in consultation with the security agencies; strategic engagement with stakeholders; formulation of regulations, guidelines and manuals for the conduct of elections and electoral activities to give clarity to the provisions of the Constitution and Electoral Act; and maintenance of extensive physical assets (offices, residential accommodation and other facilities) nationwide. In many jurisdictions, some of these responsibilities are carried out by distinct and autonomous agencies.

“In addition to these responsibilities, the Commission is required to prosecute electoral offenders. However, the Commission’s incapacity to arrest offenders or conduct investigation that leads to successful prosecution of especially the high-profile offenders, led to the suggestion to unbundle the Commission and assign some of its extensive responsibilities to other agencies as recommended by the Uwais and Nnamani Committees.

“For those who argue that the solution does not lie in expanding the federal bureaucracy by creating a new Commission, we believe that the National Electoral Offences Commission should be seen as an exception. While there are other security agencies that deal with economic and financial crimes, I am yet to hear anyone who, in good conscience, thinks that it is unnecessary to have established the anti-corruption agencies.”

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