All politicians should be in Jail – INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) has alleged politicians in Nigeria for being responsible for violence recorded during elections in the country,saying many of them should land in jail for truncating the electoral process.

The Resident Electoral commissioner of INEC in Akwa Ibom state ,Mr Mike Igini stated this while answering questions from journalists on Channels Television in Lagos.

Igini said “The legitimacy of any competitive electoral system rests squarely on the institutionalisation of certain values and practices particularly the sanctity of procedure to secure substantive or sanctity of outcome.

But what we found in our system is that there is reward for wrong doing in our society. This is our problem right now. INEC has done so much reform, innovations to bring about and ensuring the sanctity of the vote of the people but how much have we done to reform the behaviour of the political class that are great threat to our democracy.

INEC responds to introduce innovations but there is a sustained attacks by the politicians as evident from one election to the other over the years. We have done so much to improve the process.

You can bring all the fake police men all over the world , we will implement this process fully ,fairly and impartially to ensure that the will of the people is realised.

But you see, all the politicians should be in jail for compromising the process because they are the owners of thugs. They hire thugs to attack the people and INEC staff. It has never happened in the history of Nigeria that the umpire recruited ,trained and deployed thugs. Never.

Speaking on the irregularities that marred the conduct of election in Akwa Ibom, Igini said “In that same 2015 in Akwa Ibom, they ‘allocated’ five percent (of votes) to the current President,” the REC alleged during his appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

He was, however, asked to be mindful of his choice of words and he insisted, “Yes, allocated! Because in Akwa Ibom they don’t do election, they write results.”

Igini added, “I have the records, you go there; because when I arrived in Akwa Ibom State, leaders – traditional rulers, religious leaders; all groups came to me but that is not new to me, I was the commissioner in neighbouring Cross River State.”

In Akwa ibom state, they don’t conduct election, they write elections. I told them that under my watch in Akwa Ibom state ,it is going to be the will of the people.

That’s why i am being accused because from where i set up a committee to identify the location of polling units on account of the records that i have from within the system and i discovered that 23 polling units were in private homes, compounds of politicians and the committee came up with its reports and was sent to Abuja.

That led to a stakeholders meeting including governor Attah where i showed them where riggings are taking place and it cut across all political parties.

In Akwa Ibom politicians want to take control of the process and adhoc staff. I also told them that it is not the duty of politicians to determine adhoc staff. ”