The nation?s political elite has started the process of rigging the 2027 general elections, Prof Adele Jinadu has said.

Delivering his keynote address at the Policy Dialogue on ?State of Anti-Corruption Policy and Practice in Nigeria,? in Abuja, yesterday, the Professor of Political Science said known party members were being appointed as commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

His words: ?They have started the process of rigging the next general election through the appointment of known party members. Next year, many commissioners will be due for re-appointment. They will use the power of appointment to put those who will do their bidding.

??Vote buying is done through procurement, they are amazing war chest for 2027. EFCC should go to party primaries where they give huge amounts of not only naira but even dollars to buy party tickets, instead of going after poor voters who get just N2,000 or N4,000.

?Nigerian citizens have been deceived for too long. The battle has begun. We are at a critical point. Time is running out but it is not too late. We have to adopt the Night Watch Man approach.

?You must fight for the future. We should not just fold our arms doing nothing. I am not tired of fighting. We must give not give up. We must speak truth to power.?

Assessing the nation?s anti-corruption fight, he observed that political interference had not allowed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and Independent Corrupt Practices and Offences Commission, ICPC, to do their jobs.

According to him, the interference comes in various ways, including the constant removal and replacement of chairmen on the two organisations, with EFCC having the ninth chairman since its establishment in 2003.

On the wide-spread corruption in the country, Prof. Jinadu said: ?The tragedy of our democratic politics and the underlying causative roots of the problem of corruption is that our political class continues to push its self-interest, almost to the point not only of their own self-destruction but also of stultifying our national development.

?What we need to do now is to bring morality back into our politics and firmly reject the politics of immorality, that is at the heart of our country?s problem of corruption.?

Describing abuse of power as the worst form of corruption, Prof Jinadu said: ?The abuse of the power of incumbency has reached disturbing heights of impunity in our country?s Fourth Republic.

?The worst form of political corruption, it fuels other forms of corruption in the country. It makes nonsense of the ex-ante indeterminacy of democratic elections, the possibility of today?s winners becoming tomorrow?s losers and the possibility of today?s losers becoming tomorrow?s winners in our politics of electoral succession.?

He called for judicial reforms in order to properly tackle corruption, saying ?we must begin a process of reforming our legal system in fundamental ways, and away from their excessive formalism and elitist bias, in order to engender a more progressive, activist and public interest legal culture, which will provide legal anchor for social and distributive justice as state policy.? (Vanguard, but headline rejigged)

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