METRO/CRIME

2023: Bawa Cautions Against Vote Buying

 

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa, has assured Nigerians of the readiness and competence of the commission to tackle vote buying and other acts of electoral fraud, in a bid to make this year’s general elections transparent, free and fair.

This was as he called on Nigerians to shun any form of electoral malpractice, stressing that participatory engagement of Nigerians would make the elections successful.

The EFCC said this in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday.

According to the statement, Bawa spoke on Tuesday at the North-Central Stakeholder’s Round-table meeting on the 2023 general elections.

The event was organised by the Centre For Transparency Advocacy and held in Abuja.

The EFCC boss, who was represented at the event by the EFCC’s Assistant Director, Media and Publicity, Dele Oyewale, emphasised that vote buying and other electoral malpractices would be resisted.

He said, “Intelligence is about people, vote buying is about people and vote selling is about people, those that are selling votes are not ghosts, those that are buying are also not ghosts, they are all human beings.

“This shows that our individual and corporate engagements in trying to bring out what we see around us is important.

“In the EFCC, we have this mantra, if you see something, you must say something and we will do something. For any form of vote buying, we must all reject it, if we see anyone that is doing it, we must report him to the EFCC.”

He added that the EFCC was doing all it could within the ambit of the law to prevent vote buying and those arrested would face the law after the election.

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“You see, as a commission, it is within the ambit of our mandate to investigate and prosecute cases of electoral fraud, vote buying, vote selling and any form of electoral malpractice. We have been doing it not just for this election but in the past. There are so many cases in court bordering on electoral malpractice,” Bawa said.

The Executive Director, CTA, Faith Nwadishi, called for a more result-oriented method of combating electoral fraud through covert operations.

She said, “The recent initiative of collaborating with the EFCC, ICPC, NFIU, NBC, IPAC and other stakeholders by INEC during the stakeholders’ summit aimed at addressing the influence of money on the 2023 general elections must be encouraged and the decisions reached implemented.”

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