A former Chairman of Independent National Election Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has called on National Assembly to review the draft bill that allows the trend of extreme monetization of politics in Nigeria, which allows only the rich to participate in politics.
Jega said this in Winneba, Ghana, on Thursday, on the sideline of the ongoing ECOWAS Parliament’s High-level Seminar with the theme: “Two Decades of Democratic Elections in ECOWAS Member States: Achievements, Challenges, and the Way Forward.”
“They said to be a president, you can spend up to N2 billion in campaigns, to be a governor you can spend up to N1 billion, to be senator you can spend up to N500 million and this is extreme monetisation of politics,” Jega said.
“These are other provisions that National Assembly needs to consider and drastically reduce otherwise, or they will turn our democracy to plutocracy, which is government for the rich.”
While commending the passage of the bill by the National Assembly which now gives INEC power to transmit results electronically, Jega said the electoral transmission of results will reduce the rate of election fraud in Nigeria.
He said the passage of the bill was a positive development ahead of 2023 elections, adding that it was one of the legal frameworks that would guarantee credible elections in the country.
“One of the major areas where fraud takes place in the elections of Nigeria is in the transmission of results manually,” he said.
“From the polling units, to the ward level, to the constituency level, electronic transmission of result will wipe this out.”
Jega urged Nigerians to trust the new process, adding that it is wrong to assume that results will not be accurately transmitted without a 100 per cent network coverage.
He said that even in developed countries, they are sometimes confronted with the challenge of poor network, but once 70 per cent of results can be transmitted electronically, it is a pass.
