Fred Itua, Abuja
The director-general of Nigeria First Project, housing advocate and co-founder of the Young Democratic Party (YDP), Nya Etuk Ezekiel, has called for the prosecution of politicians indicted in vote buying by the International Criminal Court
He decried the rising implications of vote buying as an evil worse than any of the security challenges facing Nigeria.
Ezekiel ran for the Governorship position of Akwa Ibom in the recently concluded elections. However, he lost to the incumbent Governor Emmanuel Udom of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Etuk who briefed newsmen in Abuja on Sunday, described “vote buying as the cancer that attacks the nation’s institutional framework,” revealing that the recently concluded elections recorded political parties paying as high as N15, 000 to voters to secure their support.
He said: “Vote Buying is going to do this country more harm than insurgency, Boko Haram, killer herdsmen, kidnapping or even militancy all put together.
“The reason is whether militancy, killer herdsmen, Boko Haram or any form of insurgency can be addressed by a well set up institutional framework, but vote buying is the cancer that attacks directly our institutional framework on account that all other insurgencies can never be addressed when the system is compromised.”
He revealed: “I have decided with a few other like-minded people who were part of the last election and those not even part of the vote buying to take the issue of vote buying to the highest level, not just in this country but the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“At that level vote buying is already seen as crime against humanity and we want to make it such that any President or head of state that can be directly or indirectly linked to the act, even if he is able to dodge the laws of the country, will not be able to dodge the ICC.
“Vote buying is that evil that if not addressed today is going to be worse than what we call corruption.
“If we do not address it, Nigeria will end up not just being a problem to itself but to other nation’s around us and the whole African continent is going to be consumed and that is one thing Nigeria does not want to be known as having exported. We need to wake up to the realities of that evil called vote buying” he said.
Speaking on his experience during the past election, he lamented the current structure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC ) and electoral processes in which he said political parties rather than considering themselves as a government in waiting, proffering developmental solutions were skewed, towards money making through selling of forms and the current style of endorsing other candidates.