Global watchdog Human Rights Watch urged Nigerian authorities Sunday to set up a special panel to investigate and prosecute election-related abuses and violence.
“Nigeria has a history of violent and deeply flawed elections. At least 300 people were killed in violence linked to the last general elections in 2007,” HRW said in a joint statement with the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
The groups said an Electoral Offences Commission would investigate and prosecute offences under the Electoral Act, including incitement, the use or threat of violence, bribery, theft of ballot materials and falsification of election results.
Since November, more than 50 people have been killed in violence linked to political party primaries and election campaigns and the level of violence is expected to increase in the run-up to the April poll, the statement said.
“It is time for Nigeria to break with the past and to ensure that violence, intimidation, and fraud don?t undermine the credibility of the upcoming elections,” said senior lawyer Dafe Akpedeye, who is chairman of the Election Working Group of the NBA, in the statement.
The groups also accused the police of complicity or ignoring acts of violence and ballot stealing perpetrated by corrupt politicians.
“The police were often present during such incidents but frequently turned a blind eye or, at times, participated in abuses. The police have the sole power to investigate these crimes, yet no one has been held accountable,” the statement said.
“Setting up a properly resourced Electoral Offences Commission… will send a clear signal to candidates and political parties that people may be held accountable for any election-related abuses,” it said.
The Electoral Reform Committee, established by Nigeria’s late president Umaru Yar?Adua, following the flawed 2007 elections, found that not a single Nigerian had been convicted and punished for electoral offences since the nation’s independence in 1960, it added.
“The police lack the political will and independence to carry out investigations of election-related offenses,” it stated.
National police spokesman Olusola Amore denied charges that the force failed to prosecute electoral offenders.
“I don’t think that claims by the NBA and Human Rights Watch are true,” he told AFP.
“There has been no day that the police have not been charging people to court…as related to electoral violence. Ours is to charge them to court, we are not going to do the work of the court,” he said.
An Electoral Offences Commission Bill has been stalled in the parliament since April 2009 and failure to pass the bill “would risk further entrenching violence and corruption in the electoral process and continue the disenfranchisement of Nigerian citizens,” a senior HRW official, Corinne Dufka, said in the statement.
Nigerians will go to the polls on April 2 to elect National Assembly members, on April 9 to choose a president, and on April 16 to elect state governors and state assembly representatives.
Mar142011