Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana has said Electoral Act amendments without enforcement is totally a waste of time
Falana said this on Sunday in an interview on Arise Television.
According to him, the problem is not the absence of laws, but the refusal of the political class to enforce them.
He said what matters today in Nigeria is not ideology or quality of representation, but the gain from defections.
The senior lawyer said that people abandon the parties that elected them, embrace new ones, and face no consequences, stressing that such is the real threat to the nation’s democracy.
“We operate in an atmosphere of reckless impunity. The ongoing amendment exercise is time wasting if there’s no enforcement. We have always had a very steep penalties on purchase of votes. Thuggery and the rest of them.
“But members of the political class, the ruling parties, have never sent the engine to arrest and deal with electoral offenders.
“As far back as 2008, the Wale panel recommended the establishment of an electoral offenses commission to arrest offenders and prosecute them. No regime, including the one that campaigned for electoral reforms, has ever thought of setting up that now, what is the big deal now?
“We want to increase campaign funds and nobody has ever complied with that. The only important political point in Nigeria today is the gale of defections, and nobody is talking of that, even in the proposed amendment,” he said.
