A civil society organisation CSO), Centre For Grassroots Development and Crime Prevention has called on security agencies in Ogun State to apprehend persons linked with the massive fraud in the March 18, 2023 governorship election.
The group said the searchlight should first be beamed on a dominant opposition party and its candidates in the election.
It alleged that the ring leader and his cohorts have been running from pillar-to-post to avoid arrest
The CSO claimed that those behind the fraud used a fictitious foundation to distribute about 200,000 Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards issued by a commercial bank and loaded with N10,000 each with intention to buy votes across the state and influence the outcome of the electoral process to their favour thereby violating the electoral law with almost impunity.
In a press statement signed by its national coordinator, Comrade Taiwo Salako, a copy which was made available to newsmen, the group asserted that the magnitude of electoral fraud perpetrated by the candidate and his party during the poll was practically unprecedented in the state and called on concerned authorities to address the infraction and make the perpetrators to face the wrath of the law.
Salako said after polluting the political atmosphere of the state and flagrantly flouting the extant law of the land and the Electoral Act, the lead actor and his co-travellers in these atrocities must be prosecuted to serve as a deterrent to others with the same mentality of electoral rascality.
He said ever since the crime was committed and consequently exposed, the party’s candidate had been running from pillar to post to evade arrest and escape prosecution; which informed his recent foreign trip.
The group, therefore, called for his immediate arrest, if necessary, with the help of INTERPOL, adding that justice in that kind of situation must not be delayed because of its adverse impact on the people and the sanctity of the electoral process in Nigeria.
Salako added that the electoral infraction committed during the March 18 gubernatorial election in the state without recourse to the electoral law was a great threat to democracy not only in Ogun but Nigeria at large.
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