The Independent National Electoral Commission on Friday said
it would beam its searchlight on politicians and political parties to track the
sources of funds for their campaigns in the 2023 general election.
The commission, therefore, promised to set up committee to
monitor election expenditure ahead of the elections.
The Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, represented by a
National Commissioner, Kunle Ajayi, stated this in Abuja during a policy
roundtable conference on political campaign finance organised by The Electoral
Forum, an organ of the Initiative for Research, Innovation and Advocacy in
Development with support from MacArthur Foundation.
He said, “As long as we have not notified anybody that the
race to the 2023 general election has started, we are not unaware of what
anybody is doing. We follow the law strictly.
“We have not officially declared notice for the 2023 general
election, but when we so declare, we will put our monitoring committees to
motion like the Central Bank of Nigeria, DSS, EFCC, the ICPC, (commercial)
banks and other law enforcement agencies. We have that plan already.
“Every candidate must be made to declare his bank asset.
That is where they draw out their money, so we will make them present their
statement of account right from the onset.
“We will make it mandatory for them to turn in their bank
statement so that if they say they are doing billboard and the account remains
the same, then there is a problem.”
The INEC chairman also said that INEC would also monitor the
movement of money on election days to help tackle vote-buying at polling units.
Mahmood said that through the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, commercial banks would be mandated to report all suspicious
transactions ahead of the election.
The INEC chairman also threatened to prosecute any bank that
failed to cooperate.
Speaking on the issue of vote-buying, Mahmood said, “We are
going to establish finance monitoring teams and they will be among the
electorate but they (politicians and political parties) won’t know.
“We are going to do it in a way that the influence of money
will be reduced because we want to make the electoral field a level playing
ground for both rich and poor candidates and electorates. Everybody will go on
an equal economic level so that you won’t influence the voting pattern.”
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