An Civil Society Organisation in Osogbo, Kimpact Development Initiative has called on the Federal Government to set up an Electoral Offence Commission that will be in charge of diligent prosecution of electoral offenders.
Executive Director of the organization, Mr Bukola Idowu made this call at a press conference organized by his organization in respect to the Nigeria Election Violence Report (NEVR) project for 2019 general elections in Osogbo.
Idowu, who is the Coordinator of the IFEES funded Nigeria Election Violence Report (NEVR) project in South West expressed concerns over challenges that confronted the last Saturday’s election which are basically on logistics, smart card reader and issues that hinged on violence.
He said Kimpact recorded issues that are significant and that INEC did not strategically address despite the postponement of a week by the Commission.
He recommended that “the cases of violence in the electoral process is disturbing, and Federal Government should consider setting up Electoral Offence Commission to prosecute and punish electoral offenders as INEC presently have no such power”.
He explained that most people believe that manipulation occurs mainly at the collation centres and that “since smart Card Reader could transmit voting result directly from PUs to the INEC situation room, INEC To embrace this transmitting process as the major way of collation instead of the manual collation process that is vulnerable to manipulation and human error.
“As it will erase officers that were fatigue, cut the long period used for collation and it will enhance transparency and openness IN the collation process”.
He further lamented that the Ad-hoc officer should be well scrutinised and adequate training should be given to them before assigning to the polls.
Idowu gave kudos to the security operatives for what he described as a “professional conduct” during the polls.
He finally requested that the security agencies should look into the cases of partiality displayed by some of their members, for the subsequent election they should be impartial, fair and ensure justice in the discharge of their roles during the forthcoming election as any act of partisanship can jeopardise the peace in the country.
