Kimpact Development Initiative, KDI has called for the establishment of Electoral Offence Commission to ensure immediate prosecution of electoral offenders.
KDI made the call while addressing journalists in a press conference to release preliminary reports of the Nigeria Election Violence Report, (NEVR Project) about the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
KDI in a statement by its director, Bukola Idowu said it’s imperative for the Federal Government to set up the electoral offence commission because INEC doesn’t have the power to prosecute and punish offenders.
Bukola Idowu also recommended that to reduce incidents of manipulation and rigging, INEC should deploy a digital method to transmit results from polling units to collation centers.
“Most persons believe manipulation occurs mainly at the collation centers, since smart card reader could transmit voting result directly from PUs to the INEC situation room, then we implore INEC to embrace this transmitting process as the major way of collation instead of the manual collation process that is vulnerable to manipulation and human error.
“This we know will ease officers that were fatigue, cut the long period used for collation and it will enhance transparency and openness in the collation process”, Idowu added.
KDI also called for the improvement of the electoral umpire before the 2023 general elections.
“Independent audit should be done on the Nigeria Electoral Management Body to determine what are the best option available to improve our voting system this includes, the functionality of the smart card reader.”
Idowu noted that security agencies “should ensure that credible security assessment is done, so as to ensure in subsequent elections that considerations are given to places that are volatile or prone to violence.”