Corrupt Politicians Offering Humongous Bribes To Corps Members, Academics- Jega
The former Chairman of Independent national Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega on Thursday revealed that corrupt politicians were currently compromising the country’s electoral process by offering humongous amount of money as bribes to Youth Corps members and academics who serve as returning officers during elections.
Jega stated this while speaking at a lecture organised by the University of Lagos Muslim Community in collaboration with Muslim Ummah of South Western Nigeria and Unilag Muslim Alumni held in Lagos.
He emphasized that there is urgent need to ensure credible poll by ensuring that only people of integrity are allowed to serve as volunteers during the poll.
The former INEC boss who spoke on the theme of the lecture entitled: “Prospects and Challenges of Involving Volunteers in Nigeria Elect oral’s Process” advocated reform of the electoral process to allow election volunteers, security agencies and other officials who are usually on duties during election period to embark on early voting in order not to disenfranchise them from performing their civic duties.
Jega said, “Corrupt politicians are beginning to find creative ways to compromise Youth Corps members and some students involved in election duties. They are even increasingly penetrating and compromising seemingly credible CSOs.
“Similarly, as the use of academic staff as collation and returning officers has become predictable, corrupt politicians are increasingly snooping around university campuses and INEC offices, especially over governorship elections, inducing lecturers with humongous amounts of money with the hope of compromising their role in result collation and tabulation.
“ So far, there is no evidence that they have succeeded, but the tendency is increasing and is of great concern. The pool of potential credible collation officers and returning officers may perhaps need to be expanded to incorporate selected professional groups, to minimize the predictability of using certain universities and their staff and make it more difficult for crooked politicians to infiltrate and compromise the process.”
He stressed the need for volunteerism in electoral process, saying there is need for the reform in order the credibility of the election and give room to other volunteers, especially other professionals in addition to the academia who currently serving as returning officers.
“As Nigeria strives to leave behind its unenviable history of poorly conducted elections and makes progress in the direction of electoral integrity, an important issue to be addressed as we move towards the 2019 elections relates to how to expand the scope of the participation of citizens generally in the electoral process, and specifically how to increase the positive role of volunteers: for example, how to minimize or eliminate the challenges, which arise with their participation and how to ensure that their participation adds tremendous value to the integrity of Nigeria’s elections.
“The case for increased role of volunteers in the Nigerian electoral process cannot be over-emphasized. It is necessary and desirable and if appropriately deployed can add tremendous value to having elections with integrity, with positive spin-off effects on good democratic governance.
“Since Nigeria and Nigerians have chosen liberal democracy as the political and governance system, citizens’ active participation and constructive involvement are prerequisites for its entrenchment, stability and legitimacy. However, to maximally tap the benefits of volunteerism in the electoral process, urgent reforms are needed leading to 2019 general elections, to reposition the continuous role of members of the NYSC and academics; to open avenues for additional groups of professionals, such as engineers, doctors, journalists, etc., to join academics; and slowly and steadily set up measures that can move in the direction of recruitment of volunteers using a database of all those who have done election duty before, even when they have moved out of the NYSC or universities as students,” he said.
“ INEC, as the EMB, needs to pay even more attention to the identification and selection of credible individuals and CSOs, as volunteers and partners for bringing about improved electoral integrity,” Jega said.
