By Oludamisi Ojo.
Human Rights Lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), has observed that with Dr. Godwin Emefiele still presiding as the Central Bank Governor, sensitive election materials can’t be stashed in the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

To this end, Falana urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the CBN Governor.

According to him, the bank could erode and compromise the credibility of elections.

Falana spoke in Ado Ekiti, on Thursday, at a Southwest Youth and Women Conference organized 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 to Fight initiative’, in Ekiti and Osun governorship polls.

To prevent electoral manipulations and bloodshed in the country, Falana called for the establishment electoral offenses Tribunal, to try offenders to sanitize the system.

Falana 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.

“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 because the governor of the CBN is a card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress.

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“It has never happened anywhere in the world, this is very dangerous. The CBN Governor’s power is enormous under the CBN Act, so he can’t be a politician.

“We can’t look for an alternative place to keep our electoral materials, it is the CBN Governor that must be removed and whether President Buhari likes it or not, Emefiele must go. They had filed a motion against him and we will pursue it to a logical conclusion”, he stated.

On the need for the coming Ekiti election to be conducted transparently, the Lawyer said People commit electoral crimes because they were being aided by politicians.

In his words” Statistics showed that 750 electoral offenders were arrested in 2011, 900 in 2015, and 1,120 in 2019. But the majority of them were not prosecuted. The police even filed nil prosecution motions to terminate some of their cases”.

Falana charged the youths not to allow politicians to induce them with money saying” When I was contesting in 2003, I told politicians that if you want the children of the poor to be thugs, let your children lead them.

“What I have seen and felt in Nigeria was that the politicians give thugs money, drugged and armed them. And after the election, they will not be able to fund them and they become criminals.

“There was a by-election in Omuo Ekiti to fill a vacancy in the House of Assembly, three people were killed and two policemen injured. Right now, people are being attacked in Ekiti and the same in Osun. But all we demand is a credible, free, and fair election”.

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Falana said the electoral system would never remain stunted as long as youths and women are perpetually neglected and muzzled.

The BIGIF and NIGAWD Executive Directors, Oluwatumininu Adedeji and Abimbola Aladejare-Salako respectively, urged INEC and other stakeholders to work hard to prevent rigging, bloodshed, and violence in the Ekiti and Osun elections.

They also reiterated that youth and women should be included in the policy-making organs by all political parties to give them recognition.