‘Stiffer penalties needed to tame electoral violence’ 

Unless stiffer penalties are introduced in the country incidences of electoral violence would continue to mar elections in Nigeria, according a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Mustapha Audu.

Accordingly, the former governorship aspirant said it was high time the National Assembly enacted stiffer sanctions against violators of election guidelines and manipulators of election processes and results to check election violence in the country.

Speaking Sunday in Abuja while commemorating the fourth anniversary of his father, late former governor of Kogi, Prince Abubakar Audu, the younger Audu said the NASS must as a matter of national importance come up with stiffer sanctions to punish those who engage in election violence.

He said that the National Assembly should not only come up with stiffer sanctions, but to also ensure that security agencies arrest and prosecute such offenders.

Besides, he said security personnel who compromised during elections and abetted electoral violence should be sanctioned accordingly, saying this would deter likely culprit from engaging in the immoral act.

With particular reference to the November 16 governorship and senatorial elections in Kogi state and the violence prior to, during and even after the exercise, he described it as a shame and unnecessary.

“It is a thing of shame for every kogi person that, we as a people, cannot express our views peacefully during elections.

 “We set up a centre to review reports of election violence and what we saw was overwhelming, ‘he said.

He appealed to the media to always put pressure on the political class and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to abide by the Electoral Act by exposing their excesses.

Further, he urged security agencies to bring to book those that perpetrated electoral violence to serve as deterrent to those planning to carry out similar act.

He also called on the electorate to always hold politicians responsible for their campaign promises and vote against them if they failed to fulfil such promises.

Speaking on the essence of the anniversary, he said it was to ensure that his father’s legacies in all aspects of human endeavour live on in spite his death.

Also, he said that the millennium builders’ plaza in Abuja would be named after his late father and added the family would visit children in his village to make some interventions in line with the late Audu`s vision.

Late Audu, the first democratically elected governor of the 28-year-old kogi, died in 2016 during the governorship election in the state in which he sought re-election on the platform of APC.

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