Fed Govt to set up permanent electoral offences tribunal

THE Federal Government is set to establish a permanent electoral tribunal that would be saddled with the main responsibility of addressing issues relating to electoral fraud and offences.

Special Adviser to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mohammed Kuna, said yesterday that the Federal Government had proposed a bill for the establishment of the tribunal.

Kuna, who delivered a keynote address during a training organised for INEC legal and police officers on prosecution of election offences in Calabar, said: “This is a welcome development to the commission because it would mean that some of the cases we have been seeing of electoral fraud and offences would be addressed by separate body that would be fully staffed and funded to address exactly the issue of electoral offences.”

The training was organised by INEC with support from the European Centre for electoral Support (ECES) within the context of Component One of the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN)

Kuna said there was need to collectively address the problems of electoral impunity by ensuring that electoral offenders were diligently prosecuted.

According to him, to move the democratic process forward, it must be ensured that those who break the law were brought to book, and this, he said, was part of what the training programme sought to address.

“The issue of the electoral offences tribunal is something that has been recommended since the Uwais Commission and INEC, after the 2011 registration, given the number of multiple registrants, thought it was not capable technically and resources-wise to prosecute all the 870,000 cases of multiple registrants at that time. So, it lent its voice to the implementation of that aspect of the Uwais Commission that said that there is a need to create an electoral offences tribunal.

“After the 2011 general elections, the government set up the Lemu Commission, which also recommended that an electoral offences tribunal be created.”

He added that the commission was also working hard to check the problem of vote-buying during elections.

Cross River State Resident Electoral Commissioner Dr. Frankland Briyai said it was not just important to institute legal proceedings against electoral offenders, but far more important to successfully arraign, prosecute and secure conviction against such offenders.

Briyai, who was represented by the state INEC Administrative Secretary, Mrs. Irene Oghuma, urged the participants of the training to the make best use of the opportunity.

ECES Senior Electoral Expert Maria Teresa Mauro said the perpetration of election offences undermines the smooth conduct of the elections and impacts on the integrity of the electoral process.