EMEKA CHIDI, Abuja
A leading Advocate of good governance and anti-corruption civil society organization (HEDA Resource Center), on Monday, commended the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for its arrest of some party agents for alleged involvement in vote buying in Ekiti State during governorship election on Saturday.
The chairman of HEDA, Olanrewaju Suraju, applauded EFCC for swiftly arresting the party’s agents who were caught in while committing elections malpractices.
Suraju urged the anti-graft agency to ensure it prosecutes not only those caught but their masters.
“We commend EFCC for swift action at the Ekiti elections. We demand full prosecution of everyone involved in vote buying or any other form of electoral fraud and malpractices,”
He encouraged citizens to monitor the whole process as well as assist EFCC and other security agencies in the fight against vote buying among other electoral malpractices.
“Nigerians are getting more enlightened politically as days turns weeks and weeks into months and so on. We have also observed that electorate are getting emboldened to withstand any form of intimidation from any person.
“We encourage citizens to monitor the whole process, be vigilant and report any form of acts capable of truncating the people’s choice. We expect people’s vote to count at the end of collation,” he added.
On Saturday, the EFCC operatives arrested some All Progressives Congress, APC, agents for alleged vote-buying while another agent of the opposition party, People’s Democratic Party, PDP, was equally picked up based on a tip-off.
The agents were nabbed at the polling unit located at Ola Oluwa Grammar School, Ilawe road, Ado Ekiti, acccording to the reports.
The group said that with what happened at Ekiti State gubernatorial election, concerned persons including Civil Society Organizations, independent Election Observers and party candidates have the expressed of the possibility of political moneybags messing up the 2023 general election process.