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The Special Forum of the Anti-corruption Situation Room has called for mass mobilisation against vote-buying and diligent prosecution of indicted politicians and their political parties.
Participants at the programme, which was organised by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda in partnership with the National Orientation Agency and others, in Abuja on Thursday identified bad governance, poverty, loss of social values, among others, as factors contributing to vote trading during elections.
The coordinator of a civil society organisation, YIAGA Africa, Samson Itodo, said while the conduct of elections in the country had improved, the economy had not.
He said poverty was a major cause of voter inducement.
He suggested the mobilisation of people at the grass roots as well as the political parties against the syndrome.
“The political parties should be made to sign a public accord on vote-buying. The naming and shaming of culprits may also help,” Itodo said.
He accused government at all levels of engaging in vote-buying using government agencies to perpetrate the act which he said security agencies had failed to address.
The Executive Secretary, National Human Rights Commission, Mr Anthony Ojukwu, observed that Nigerians were yet to be involved in the anti-graft campaign.
The NOA Director-General, Dr Garba Abari, said his agency was already holding talks with the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs to create a pan-Nigerian coalition against corruption.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, Anambra State, Paulinus Ezeokafor, on Thursday said the church would punish any parishioner caught in the act of vote buying in the 2019 general elections.
[Punch]