Jega seeks establishment of election offences tribunal

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has renewed the call for the establishment of an electoral offences tribunal before the 2015 general elections.
Jega made the call during a debate on ethics and elections organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on Tuesday night in Abuja.
The chairman said the tribunal would help to restore sanity to the country’s electoral process and deter people from committing electoral offences.
“I was privileged to serve in the Justice Muhammad Lawal Uwais-led Committee and I know we made a recommendation for the establishment of a tribunal to deal with the impunity in the way electoral offences are being committed in Nigeria.
“We need to do something unique and that is to establish an electoral offences tribunal which will be saddled with the responsibility of arresting, investigating and prosecuting offenders,” the News Agency of Nigeria quoted the INEC chairman as saying at the forum.
Jega said that in the 2011 general elections, the commission detected 870,000 cases of multiple registrations out of the 73.5 million voters registered.
He, however, expressed regrets that only 270 offenders had been prosecuted by the body till date.
The chairman blamed poor funding and inadequate staff for the commission’s low performance in the prosecution of electoral offenders.