The Senator representing Edo North Senatorial District, Adams Oshiomhole has appealed to his colleagues in the Nigerian Senate to desist from rigging elections and arming youths who function as thugs during the polls.
Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State and ex-National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) made this appeal during a Senate Debate on the Electoral Act Amendment Bill on Thursday, October 23.
The lawmaker warned that engaging youths as thugs and for the act of rigging during elections undermines the nation’s democratic principles and on a larger scale fuels post-election violence and other criminal activities like robberies and kidnappings.
He also called for strong political reform and accountability strategies among elected officers who he said should never be found engaging in such acts.
“As elected persons, we as senators should not, directly or indirectly, secretly or openly, aid and abet unemployed or semi-employed people and arm them to disrupt elections. If we reform our character, this problem is 90% solved. In a just answer, I launched one man, one vote, one woman, one vote.”
“After every election, violent crimes increase because the politicians who have procured weapons for children who are hungry and pay them a little fee, once the election is over, they are not able to retrieve the weapons. And the weapons are then deployed by these people for violence,” Oshiomhole warned.
Continuing, the former governor stated that Nigeria’s democracy should only be anchored on free will voting and the people’s acceptance not violence and the forms of manipulations adopted by politicians.
The lawmaker stated that the beauty of democracy should not just lie in occupying any fancy political seats but in the feeling that the people whom you represent found you worthy and chose you through free will and voice to deliver good governance to them.
He added, “If you achieve it by true rigging or other manipulation, deep in your heart, you know that you are not a happy person.”
According to Oshiomhole, there is a need for the leadership of the Senate to find ways to reform politicians – in character – as this remains the key to addressing almost 90 per cent of Nigeria’s electoral challenges.
“It is now possible to do an election without cutting their bodies, it wasn’t so before, because we convinced everybody that there is no merit in taking an election or conducting an election as if it is a state of war,” he said.
Following the debate, the bill was moved to the Senate Committee on Electoral Matters for further review and to meet up with the forthcoming gubernatorial off-cycle polls in Edo and Ondo states.