The conviction of an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Returning Officer, Professor Peter Ogban by a \u00a0High Court in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State\u00a0 on Wednesday, March 24, appears to mark a significant milestone in bringing electoral offenders in Nigeria to accountability. The court convicted Professor Ogban for\u00a0 manipulating election results, publishing and announcing false results in a National Assembly election held in February 2019 in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. He was the Returning Officer for the election. It will be recalled that INEC in a statement by its Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Akwa Ibom State, Mike Igini, vowed to prosecute the allegations of misconduct against its said Returning Officer, Peter Ogban, in order to show INEC\u2019s commitment to electoral responsibility and accountability. Prof. Ogban\u2019s conviction and sentencing to three years imprisonment would help debunk the prevailing notion that INEC is not able to carry out the job of conducting elections, as well as that of prosecution of electoral offenders. It would appear however, that INEC\u2019s successful prosecution of Prof. Ogban may represent only a tip of what is certainly a major challenge to Nigeria\u2019s elections \u2013 impunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Election observers over the years have tracked and\nreported several cases of electoral impunity, including of election officials,\ncandidates and political parties perpetrating various forms of electoral abuse.\nReports exist of parties and candidates falsifying election results, announcing\nfake victory, perpetrating violence against election officials and their political\nopponents, including even murder and arson. It will be recalled that in a\nrelated development, a High Court in Idah, Kogi State had convicted and\nsentenced one Ocholi Edicha to 12 years and six months imprisonment in the\npopular case of the killing of Women Leader\nof the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kogi State, Salome Abuh during the\n2019 governorship election in the State. Mrs. Abuh was shot and set ablaze in\nher residence, following an altercation among political party supporters. These\nconvictions most certainly draw attention to the fact of the consequences of\nelectoral abuse, and reduce the sense of impunity among prospective electoral\noffenders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The conviction of an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Returning Officer, Professor Peter Ogban by a \u00a0High Court in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State\u00a0 on Wednesday, March 24, appears to mark a significant milestone in bringing electoral offenders in Nigeria to accountability. The court convicted Professor Ogban for\u00a0 manipulating election results, publishing and announcing false […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[278,282,281,279],"class_list":["post-1995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-court-convicts-inecs-returning-officer","tag-manipulation-of-election-results","tag-professor-ogban","tag-sets-tone-for-electoral-accountability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2001,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions\/2001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}