The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will arrest and prosecute anyone that engages in vote-buying in the September 22 governorship election in Osun State, INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu, said yesterday.
Yakubu,speaking at the commissionโs quarterly consultative meeting with political parties in Abuja, said the commission would no longer take lightly the issue of vote-buying.
โWe are witnessing an ugly trend of vote-buying in recent elections in the country; this is giving our democracy a bad name.
โThere is difference between democracy, which is the government of the people, made by the people and for the people, and plutocracy, which is government by the rich.
โWe are going to make the Osun governorship election a big statement by arresting and prosecuting vote-buyers. We canโt carry this ugly trend to 2019 elections,โhe said.
He urged political parties to adhere strictly to the commissionโs timetable and schedule of activities for 2019 general elections.
The chairman advised political parties to ensure that their primaries were credible, saying credible and peaceful elections started with political parties which were the cornerstone of our democracy.
He added: โNobody can aspire for an elective position without a political party. We conduct the election, while parties produce the candidates, and that is why conducting credible party primaries is essential.โ
He said the INEC had so far received invitation letters from 60 political parties out of the 91 registered political parties to monitor their primaries.
Yakubu added the commission would only recognise notices of primaries from partiesโ national executive committees.
โNotification should not come from branches; avoid incessant changes to party primaries and strife to eliminate rancorous primaries.
โWe incur cost in the process of monitoring party pri
maries; we donโt have all the resources in the world to monitor party primaries.
โPrimaries should be resolved without litigations; we are still battling with litigations from party primaries conducted in 2014; we have been dragged to court 680 times over party primaries.
โPolitical parties are key to our democracy; some parties change names of candidates who genuinely emerged from party primaries, while some submit names of candidates without conducting primaries.
โEven though we have no power under the law to reject the names of candidates submitted by political parties, this time, we will name and shame political parties that do these.
โSo, we should do the right thing for our democracy.โ
