Electoral corruption worst form of corruption, says Magu
Andrew Orolua, Abuja
The acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, has described electoral corruption as the worst form of corruption that undermines the will of the people and invests power in illegitimate hands.
According to Magu, a government that pays its way into power is hardly expected to be accountable; its priority upon assumption of office would be how to recoup its investment.
“That is the open sesame to corruption in public life, a phenomenon that has held us down as a nation,” he stated.
Magu stated this on Tuesday, at the National Policy Dialogue on Eradicating Electoral Corruption (Vote-Buying) at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria.
Magu, who spoke through the Secretary of the Commission, Ola Olukoyede, noted that the dialogue was critical to “our collective aspiration to clean up the institutions and process of election management for the good governance of our nation”.
He said that it was to mitigate the damage done to the integrity of our electoral processes through vote buying that the commission resolved to play a more active role in stemming the practice.
“The EFCC’s intervention was moderated by our understanding of the pattern of vote buying in the elections that were held in two states, Ekiti and Osun states, in 2018.
“To stem the ugly practice, the Commission decided to employ a combination of preventive and enforcement strategies.”
“Before the political actors became aware that the commission had become unusually interested in the electoral processes, the EFFC held sensitisation meetings with critical stakeholders in the financial sector, impressing on them the need not to lend their institutions to be used as vehicles to subvert the will of the people,” Magu stated.
He disclosed that the commission is prosecuting a number of vote buying offenders and have secured the conviction of a local government councillor in Gombe State for vote buying.
The commission has also finalised arrangement to file charges against more offenders and those arrested for vote buying and some others with large sums of money they could not explain the source.
