8TH ANTI-CORRUPTION SITUATION ROOM
Partnership for Monitoring, Documenting, Reporting, and Prosecuting Vote Trading During the February And March General Elections: Partners give commitments for joint observation for prosecution of offenders.
HEDA in collaboration with Transition Monitoring Group and other partnering CSOs and NGOs extracted a commitment from the Police Service Commission, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Femi Falana Chambers, National Human Rights Commission(NHRC), Women and Advocacy Research and Documentation Centre (WARD C) and other stakeholders to work together during and after the general elections to ensure that electoral corruption is prosecuted and culprit punished in accordance to the law
The commitment was extracted at the 8th ACSR organized by HEDA in conjunction with TMG. The forum which was held on the 12th day of February 2019 had in attendance; Mr. Mohammed Adamu (Acting Inspector General of Police), Femi Falana SAN (Human Rights Lawyer), Dr. Biola Akiyode-Afolabi (Chairperson, TMG), Professor Shehu Abdullahi, Representatives of ICPC and EFCC, and participants drawn from other CSOs and NGOs.
The forum among other things unanimously agreed that electoral corruption is the bane of our democratic system and the foundation for other forms of corruption. Therefore, the need to stamp out electoral corruption must be taken seriously if the country is to stamp out corruption.
The 8th ACSR which was characterized by paper presentations and debates identifies major areas of electoral corruption which including;
- Vote buying/trading
- Exchange of food items for votes
- Exorbitant sales of nomination forms
- Community collective inducement
- Organized reward system during the elections
- Buying and warehousing of voters’ cards before elections
- Surrendering voters’ cards to cartel as a precondition for access to social amenities
- Buying of party agents
- Teleguiding voters
In an open unanimity, the forum agrees to foster an open collaboration during the elections, to observe the process, the police, anti-corruption agencies, INEC and observers group led by TMG, HEDA and other partners all resolved to follow up the process of elections and compile at the end of the electoral exercise to compile list of culprit, suspects as the case may be to ensure that offenders are prosecuted.
With this commitment for collaboration by participating organizations, HEDA together with TMG set the ground for a robust partnership aimed at focusing on electoral corruption.
RECOMMENDATIONS
After the addresses, statements in support and observations the event was resolved as follows:
- The bringing to the light any Attorney General that attempts to file a nolle prosequi (to discontinue or withdraw) for promoting criminality
- Deployment of about 4000 observers across Nigeria to cover all the 774 Local government areas across the country to observe the voting process from the booth to the collation centre
- Toward a credible, transparent election, an Election geared situation room tagged the “Election Observation Platform” to hold in Lagos at Radisson Blu Hotel towards the realization of the mandate of the partnership to support processes that will contribute to the realization of free, fair and credible elections.
- Referral of incidences that the police need to respond to from the situation room to address the issue to take quick response
- Working hand in hand with other organizations that created their own situation room particularly Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) working with Nigeria Election Situation Room focusing majorly at the collation centre
- Deployment of eminent Nigerians to act as opinion leaders to add more credibility to the report that would sprung out of the Election Observation Platform situation room in response to the election process
- Assembling of a team of young patriotic lawyers in each of the states of the federation to handle the cases almost pro bono in ensuring those who are arrested for committing electoral offences are successfully prosecuted
- The police collaboration with the public in the implementation of the security strategies put in place to have free, fair and credible elections in the country.
- Inauguration of the Police Election Monitoring Investigation team to survey and take up cases identified by INEC as compromise or offence for investigation and prosecution of the case
- Partnership of the police with diverse communities to foster the principles of community policing to identify problems and work with the community to solve the problems.
- Professionalism of security personnel during and after the election exercise and the deployment of other security personnel to augment the shortage of police officers and the arresting of security personnel’s that serve as VIP escorts to anyone to the polling booth
- Police officer and other security agents are prohibited from escorting public officers to polling units in uniforms and carrying weapons at the polling units. Anyone found violating the order will be arrested and prosecuted
- Command PROs are mandated to receive reports of incidences for compilation and appropriate actions. Observers and Citizens are to contact Command PROs or Force PROs to report violence or vote trading before and during elections.
- Advocacy of peace by spiritual leaders to the politician to convey to their followers to be law abiding citizens before, during and after the elections.
- Going beyond arresting and prosecuting offenders and Identification by people of party programs and ideologies will help curb the menace of vote trading and give them confidence to the people in the government
- Elites are to organize and mobilize people, to challenge the government who wins immediately after the election to take up every major problem confronting our country
- Waging war against security votes and collaboration between INEC and the Nigeria police force to ensure there is a follow up on the successful prosecution of these electoral offenders
