Unending wait for Electoral Offences Commission

The need to establish an Electoral Offences Commission has been a recurrent debate dating back to 2003 when Nigeria was expected to begin the consolidation process of her democratic process. The nation had four years earlier enthroned an elected government headed by Olusegun Obasanjo, after decades of militarised polity with attendant human rights abuses, mass corruption, and diplomatic row that had dragged the image of the nation into the mud.

In 2003, 2007, 2011, and subsequent general elections held till date, electoral offences ranging from voter inducement, ballot box snatching, and more have become the order of the day. The Electoral Reform Committee headed by a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Uwais, had in 2007 recommended the establishment of a special prosecution body to be known as the Electoral Offences Commission.

The National Electoral Offences Commission Bill was subsequently drafted to ensure free, fair, and credible elections in Nigeria by the creation of a commission primarily charged with the prevention and detection of electoral offences, the arrest and apprehension of electoral offenders, and the prosecution of same.

The bill which passed the second reading in the House of Representatives on June 30, 2022, was pushed by relevant stakeholders, including the Independent National Electoral Commission before the 2023 general elections. The bill did not come as a novel development, as there had been several attempts by the federal legislature to enact such a bill as early as 2019. A similar bill was passed by the legislature and sent to the President for assent but was sent back to the House for further deliberations.

The Bill, which was merged with four others was sponsored by the Chairman, House Committee on Electoral Matters, Aishatu Duku, has seven parts and 48 sections, and sought to take the “burden” of prosecuting electoral offenders off INEC. The bill made it unrealistic for INEC to conduct free, fair, and credible elections and simultaneously prosecute offences arising from the same elections. The bill is to provide the legal framework for the investigation and prosecution of electoral offences for the general improvement of the electoral process in Nigeria.

Recall that the Senate had in July 2021 passed a similar bill. The bill passed by the upper chamber prescribes a 20-year jail term for offenders found guilty of snatching ballot boxes during elections.

Some of the relevant portions of the bill include; the bill provides for the establishment of the National Electoral Offences Commission as a corporate body capable of suing and being sued, and that its headquarters shall be located in the Federal Capital Territory; the bill provides for the functions of the commission to include the investigation of all electoral offences created in any law relating to elections in Nigeria, and the prosecution of offenders of these offences in addition to other functions; the bill provides that the commission shall have an Investigations, Legal and Prosecutions Unit, an Elections Monitoring and Operations Unit, an Administration Unit, a Research and Training Unit.

The bill defined and prescribed punishments for new electoral offences such as the offence of disturbing the public peace by using loudspeakers and playing musical instruments in a polling unit or its environs on election day, and punishing it with a minimum of six months imprisonment or a fine of N100,000 or both, the offence of defamation and damaging the character of an election candidate or his family member with a penalty of 10 years imprisonment or a N10,000,000 fine; the offence of propagating information during a campaign that can undermine the independence, sovereignty, and unity of Nigeria, and capable of causing people to vote based on any religion, tribe or language amongst others, with a proposed punishment of 20 years imprisonment without fine.

The bill also made it an electoral offence for employers to refuse their employees a reasonable time for voting, punish them, or deduct from their remunerations for failure to show up to the office on election day, with the penalty for doing such being a fine of at least N6,000,000 or three years imprisonment.

Also, the bill provides that the courts which shall have jurisdiction to try offences under the bill are the Federal High Court and the High Court of a State or Federal Capital Territory. Furthermore, the bill laid out more stringent punishment for existing offences such as vote-buying and bribery; imposing a punishment of 15 years imprisonment, whereas under the Electoral Act, the offence carries a punishment of 12 months’ imprisonment or a fine of N500,000 or both.

A lot of the existing electoral offences under the Electoral Act have been redefined in the bill with more stringent punishment in the form of a greater imprisonment term, fine, or both.

Meanwhile, on January 17, 2023, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, urged the National Assembly to speed up legislative work on the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal Bill. Yakubu, who made the appeal in his presentation at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House in London recently, expressed helplessness in the prosecution of electoral offences.

“Although the commission is empowered by the Electoral Act to prosecute electoral offences, it lacks the power and resources to make arrests and thoroughly investigate electoral offences. Efforts at mitigating electoral malfeasance can only become effective with the arrest, prosecution, and sanctioning of the ‘mother spiders’ to end their reign of impunity.

It is for this reason that INEC supports the establishment of the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal imbued with the responsibility of prosecuting electoral offences as recommended in the reports of various committees set up by the Federal Government, notably the Uwais Committee (2009), the Lemu Committee (2011) and the Nnamani Committee (2017).

“While we will continue to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies for the arrest, investigation, and prosecution of electoral offenders, most of those who are arrested, tried, and convicted so far are the foot soldiers rather than the sponsors of electoral violence and other violations. This will enable the commission to focus on its core mandate of organising, supervising, and conducting elections and electoral activities,” Yakubu said.

On November 11, 2023, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arrested 14 suspected vote buyers in Otuoke, Adawari playgrounds in Bayelsa and at various polling units in Imo and Kogi. EFCC spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, said the suspects were arrested in intelligence-driven operations that commenced several days before the off-cycle governorship elections in the three states.

“Also, a total sum of N11,040,000, comprising N9,310,00 intercepted from suspected vote buyers and sellers in Bayelsa, and N1,730,000 intercepted from electoral fraud suspects across Imo State, were recovered from them.”