Why Creation Of Electoral Offences Commission Is Necessary – INEC

Why Creation Of Electoral Offences Commission Is Necessary – INEC

Rotimi Oyekanmi, Chief Press Secretary to Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has backed the commission’s push to establish an Electoral Offences Commission, for the purpose of investigating and prosecuting electoral offences.

INEC and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Tuesday differed on the quest by the House of Representatives for a National Electoral Offences Commission.

While INEC supported the parliament to establish the body, the anti-graft agency kicked against it, saying the functions of the pproposed commission are performed by existing institutions.

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Speaking on Wednesday when he appeared as a guest on Daily Trust’s Twitter Spaces themed: ‘2023: INEC and Handling of Election Results’, Oyekanmi said the commission would run independently.

He said: “The EFCC is a creation of the law. There were high courts, both at the state and federal levels. Do those high courts address financial crimes? No. That was why anti-corruption agencies like the ICPC or EFCC had to be created. So, if the existing law before the ICPC and EFCC were created, were working perfectly, there would have been no need for the creation of the anti-corruption agencies.

“So, the system as we have it now, looking at the number of people that were killed and maimed and life destroyed and nobody has been held accountable, we need that electoral offences commission so that we can take people (offenders) specifically there.

“What we are saying is that there has to be a commission that will be independent and would have its own power to arrest, investigate, prosecute and apply sanctions on those who send thugs out to disrupt elections, kill people and then nothing happens to them.”

Speaking on the electronic transmission of results, Oyekanmi said it evolved because of suspicion that arose at the collation centre due to late arrival of results from the polling units.

He noted that electronically transmitted results would be the primary focus of INEC during elections, adding that reaults collated manually at the polling units must reflect what is transmitted.

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He said, “We have done many pilots over the last several years to improve the integrity of elections, and we found through all the post-election reviews that the problem is never at the polling units (PUs), the problem starts at the collation level where people now begin to suspect what is going on there, especially if the results are not coming out as quickly as people expect.

“Because of that, INEC began to innovate on how to make this collation and management of election results transparent….There are prescribed rules for presiding officers on how to go about this. What the law says is that when you have an election and the election is closing, the presiding officers will count the votes, after counting the votes at the polling unit level, you must record the votes on the prescribed form EC8 A and you then look at the accredited number of voters from the electronic device, which is the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).

“The law says that the number of accredited voters must equal the number of votes cast so there is no room for over-voting and if any agent of a political party does not agree with that result when it is counted and there is dispute maybe the number of voters cast does not tally with the number of accredited number of voters, the presiding officer is mandated to use what was transmitted electronically to resolve the matter.

“It is in our law that the presiding officer must transmit the result electronically after the close of polls and counting of votes in the presence of all. The presiding officer is mandated to use the BVAS to snap the result sheet in PDF format and transmit it automatically to the IReV.

“This is what we have been doing since the Nasarawa State by-elections and other subsequent elections, including Anambra, FCT, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun elections.”

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