The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has turned down the bill seeking to organise the Electoral Offences Commission to handle all electoral offences.
The commission noted that most of the offences listed in it are already taken care of by it and other agencies.
Deborah Adamu-Eteh, Assistant Commander of EFCC, who represented the Commission expressed her opposition to the bill on Tuesday during the Public Hearing organized by the House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters.
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The Commissioner said, “create an agency solely to investigate and prosecute electoral offences most especially when our electoral process is seasonal in nature.”
The EFCC posited that existing agencies should be supported to prosecute offenders.
On the other hand, the Chairman of INEC, Yakubu Mahmood, held that the reform of electoral offences would not be completed without the Electoral Offence Commission.
He maintained that several committees on electoral reforms have recommended the creation of the outfit.
“It has been part of all national conversations on constitutional and electoral reforms for the last 13 years. The Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on electoral reforms recommended it in 2009, echoed by the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu Committee following the post-election violence of 2011 and, most recently, by the Senator Ken Nnamani Committee on Constitutional and Electoral Reform in 2017.
Similar recommendations are contained in reports of police investigations, INEC administrative enquiries, court judgments, reports by the National Human Rights Commission as well as several accredited election observers,” he said.
