Early Campaigns: INEC Required To Charge Violators, Says Falana

A human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, wants the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to be stricter in regulating early campaigns, asking it to charge violators in court.

Falana spoke on Sunday, describing campaigns ahead of the 2027 elections as abnormal.

“By the way, INEC must charge some of these guys before the court. Let them come to court and say, ‘Sorry, my Lord, there is no provision for punishment,” Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said on Sunday Politics.

“If you fail to comply with the court order, you have committed contempt and will go to jail,” he told the host, Seun Okinbaloye.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Yusuf Dantalle, has urged President Bola Tinubu and other political leaders to call their supporters to order over acts of early campaigns ahead of the 2027 elections.

He described early campaigns as aberrations, stressing that office-holders should allow their work to campaign for them.

Dantalle, a guest on Channels TV’s Politics Today, lamented that people have been engaging in early campaigning contrary to the provisions of the law, which stipulates 150 days before the election.

The IPAC chairman, who referenced the 2027 billboards of President Tinubu and other officeholders across Abuja, admitted that some of them say their supporters are putting up the billboards.

Dantalle, however, said, “He should be able to tell them not to do so for him. It’s an aberration to start campaigning two years into your administration.”

He said politicians’ good works should do the campaigning for them, not the billboards that have been put up so far.

The IPAC chairman accused incumbent office holders of using their offices to campaign, lamenting that this has created an uneven playing field against aspirants who aren’t in office.

However, he decried the law’s vagueness regarding what constitutes a campaign, stressing that a constitutional amendment could help make it explicitly clear.

Dantalle also decried the motive of aspirants for political office, noting that most of them seek the office as a business, not service.

“They want to live and die in it,” he said.

He also said the talk about increasing the remuneration of political office holders is embarrassing.