A civil society organisation, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), says tackling corruption is imperative to achieving public trust and enhanced democratic process in Nigeria.
The Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Rafsanjani, said this while featuring in the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Personality Interview Series on Sunday in Abuja.
Rafsanjani, who is also the Head, Transparency International, Nigeria, said that corruption remained a major threat to Nigeria’s electoral integrity.
According to him, corruption erodes public trust, distorts electoral balance and weakens the credibility of democratic processes.
Speaking on the impact of corruption on elections, he noted that manipulation within the legal and institutional frameworks could significantly discredit the conduct of free, fair and credible polls.
“It is clear that corruption undermines credible elections in Nigeria. First, when you have corruption in the legal framework, you have started discrediting a free, fair and credible election.
“Secondly, when you violate the constitution which says that you should not appoint card-carrying party members into the electoral office and you go ahead to do that, you have also injured free, fair and credible elections.
“Now when you are using the state institutions to manipulate and collect victory from another person or party, and allocate to yourself because you have the judiciary, that’s corruption.
“That will demotivate the citizens from believing in those institutions,” Rafsanjani said.
He further stated that the misuse of state institutions, particularly the judiciary and security agencies, to influence election outcomes could constitute a serious form of political corruption capable of discouraging citizens’ participation.
“The manipulation of electoral outcomes through institutional control diminishes public belief in democratic structures and weakens accountability,” he said.
Highlighting the dangers of illicit campaign financing, Rafsanjani said that corruption creates opportunities for individuals with questionable wealth to hijack the political process.
According to him, their dirty money helps them to procure electoral victories and influence appointments within key state institutions which gradually renders democratic institutions ineffective and unfair to citizens.
He warned that manipulated elections would ultimately produce legitimacy crises for elected leaders, as citizens are less likely to recognise outcomes perceived as fraudulent.
“So corruption undermines the political integrity in the country, and when you perpetrate through illegal elections or you manipulate the election, people will not give you that legitimacy.
“Your legitimacy is called to question and that is why it is very important that political corruption is dealt with.
“This is because once you allow political corruption, it means that you have allowed the state to be captured by those who have already wrecked the state.
“They want to now continue to use their influence to continue to wreck the state and destroy the integrity of both the institutions – the political institutions as well as the bureaucratic institutions,” he said.
The executive director, therefore, called for stronger action against political corruption, emphasising that failure to address the problem could enable powerful interests to capture the state and further damage the integrity of the country’s political and bureaucratic institutions.
