Human Rights Lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, has told the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that sensitive election materials can’t be stashed in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria spoke in Ado Ekiti, on Thursday, at a Southwest Youth and Women Conference organised by New Generation Girls and Women Development Initiative (NIGAWD) and Balm in Gilead Foundation for Sustainable Development (BIGIF).
The event, sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development, National Democratic Institute and United Kingdom Agency for International Development, was intended to promote the ‘Vote not Fight initiative’, in Ekiti and Osun governorship polls.
Ruing the increasing penchant and propensity for election manipulations and bloodshed in the country, Falana craved the establishment electoral offences Tribunal, to try offenders to sanitise the system.
He regretted that despite that over 2,000 electoral offenders had been arrested by the police since the 2011 general elections, many were neither zealously prosecuted nor punished.
According to him, “INEC is trying, it has deployed technology to get rid of rigging, but we can no longer keep sensitive election materials in the vault of the CBN.”