The Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Dr. Chidi Odinkalu, has backed the call that politicians who get into public offices through electoral fraud should forfeit all the salaries and allowances accrued to them while in office.
He said forfeiture of such benefits was the best way to make fraudulent politicians accountable.
The NHRC boss, in an interview with our correspondent, stated that if Nigerian courts had been issuing such orders, electoral fraud would have been reduced in elections.
Odinkalu said, “That is an order within the competence of the courts. I can’t understand why the courts have shirked it. It’s the easiest way to make beneficiaries accountable for electoral fraud.
“If such orders had been made, fewer people will indulge in electoral fraud on the scale we have it in Nigeria. About that, I’m confident.”
While stating that it was the responsibility of the courts, the attorney general, the law enforcement agencies and the electoral commission to punish electoral offenders, he said the NHRC had undertaken “the most ambitious review of proven electoral offences in the history of Nigeria.”
He said, “Last year, we recommended 41 senior public officers to the Attorney General of the Federation for prosecution following that review. That list included former governors, senators, etc.
“At the conclusion of the first phase of the project in May this year, the Governing Council of the NHRC approved for indictment about 117 senior former elected officers for various acts of electoral impunity. But no action has been forthcoming from the Executive, in my view, because political parties in power have no incentive to prosecute their own.”
Odinkalu recalled that the Babalakin Commission of Inquiry into FEDECO in 1986, which was set up by General Muhammadu Buhari in 1984 while he was a military Head of State, made similar recommendations.
“Much of its findings remain valid even today,” he stated.
Odinkalu, however, faulted the call for capital punishment for corrupt public office holders, saying Nigerians tend to focus on the wrong things.
He said, “In all likelihood, the thing that will stop a potential criminal is not the thought of the punishment but rather the likelihood of getting caught.
“If we can focus more on how to improve catching the offender rather than on what happens to people that we are unable or unwilling to catch, that would be progress.”
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