Electoral Offenders Should Be Imprisoned, Says Igini

Akwa Ibom State Resident Electoral Commision and lawyer, Mr. Mike Igini, yesterday, expresed concern about Nigeria’s permissive electoral system, saying electoral offenders or vote buyers must be made to face the wrath of the law and sent to jail.

Igini was a guest on The Morning Show of the AriseTV and spoke on the backdrop of the review of the Anambra election concluded last week.

He recalled the viral video of a political party agent distributing money during the Anambra election, saying it was the primary responsibility of security agents to arrest anybody commiting such offences, as vote buying.

“What is going on in our country is that we have a permissive system. If we must drive home our seriousness, we must deal with the big guns first. Very many of them that we see today are supposed to be in prison. The pyramid of value is upside down and integrity is at the base,” he said.

He described democracy as an orchestra, saying the democratic process was a multi-stakeholder responsibility.

His words: “The whole embrace of democracy is because it brings about participation and accountability in the process of human development. Democracy cannot be sustained without the rule of law. We are looking forward to that day and we hope that some of the innovation we have put in place, we will be proud of what we have done, when we leave office. What we see in Nigeria, when people have opportunity to be in office, they will suddenly become activists, but so far so good. In Anambra politics, by the time the dust settles, we realise that we made remarkable success.”

Igini, however, regretted that Nigeria’s electoral system was not based on trust “due to the difficult election we have had in the country, and that INEC has been under credibility recession for a very long time.

“Since 2011 till date, elections that we have conducted are of remarkable departure from what we used to have before in this country. But we are still having difficulties,” he said, expressing concern that professors, who were engaged to ensure the successful conduct of elections were the ones circumventing the system by receiving politicians pre-collated results.

He said, “Unfortunately, I can’t believe that professors, who were engaged after the people have voted will alter results. We were able to secure the conviction of a professor for three days, but another high court in Akwa Ibom on equal jurisdiction, granted him bail from a correctional centre pending appeal.

“Right now we are in the court of appeal. The second case if that of Prof. Ojok. His case is coming up in the next two weeks. It has to do with a professor accepting or receiving politicians pre-collated results to make a return, that is an abomination.

“That underscores the importance of innovation that we are doing by the commission to reduce human interface. That is why we must commend all stakeholders including the media for staying when there were controversies about e- transmission,” he said.