Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to “take responsibility and end impunity for vote-buying and undue influence in Nigeria’s elections by promptly ensuring the arrest and prosecution of suspected perpetrators of these criminal acts in the Osun State governorship election,” IgbereTV reports
There are reports of a brazen pattern of vote-buying and electoral bribery in several polling units particularly by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the Osun Governorship election conducted on Saturday 16 July 2022. Vote trading was witnessed in several polling units.
In the letter dated 16 July 2022 and signed by SERAP deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare, the organisation said: “INEC seems to have furthered a general policy of impunity for vote buying and undue influence in elections by refusing to prosecute suspected perpetrators and their sponsors.”
SERAP said, “INEC has quite an impressive portfolio of powers of its own to curb and punish vote buying, and need not wait for other agencies before meting out its own effective means of prevention and prosecution.”
