Electoral Offences: House of Reps backs 10-year jail term, N75m fine for forgery, result sheet destruction
By: Abudu Olalekan
Nigeria’s House of Reps is getting tough on some electoral offences, approving a 10-year jail term and N75m fine for forgery. But they rejected a key clause on delegate bribery.
The folks in Abuja, they’re trying to put some fear into election riggers. Big time.
In what felt like a rare show of teeth, the House of Representatives took a hard look at the Electoral Act, 2022, and decided it wasn’t scary enough. So they gave it an upgrade. Or at least, parts of it. On Thursday, during plenary, the hammer came down. If you get caught forging nomination papers or, you know, just deciding to destroy election result sheets, they’re not playing anymore. The new proposal? Ten years in jail. Or a fine of N75 million.
A huge jump. The old fine was N50 million, which is a lot, but N75 million is enough to make anyone sweat. A slap on the wrist it ain’t. They also tacked on a N5 million fine if you get caught using someone else’s voter’s card. Simple as that.
But hold on. It’s not all fire and brimstone. Here’s where the story gets a little more… political. There was another proposal on the table. A really juicy one. It suggested a two-year prison sentence for anyone who financially or materially, you know, induces delegates to swing a party primary or congress. In plain English: it aimed to punish people for buying votes at the primary level, where the real horse-trading happens.
They rejected it. Flat out.
The argument? Politicians being politicians. Members argued that such a law could be “weaponised” by political rivals to harass good, honest aspirants and candidates. You see the problem? It’s okay to threaten a decade in prison for someone shredding a result sheet, but cracking down on the money that flows before the first ballot is even cast? That was a bridge too far. It hit a little too close to home, maybe.
There was another big change, this one about over-voting. Remember all that drama about “over-voting” in the last elections? The old rule was pretty blunt: if the number of votes in a polling unit was more than the number of accredited voters, the whole thing gets cancelled. Scrap it. Do it again.
Well, not anymore. The House decided that was too messy. Instead of throwing the whole thing out and starting over, they’ll just do some math. The new framework allows them to deduct the excess votes from all the candidates’ scores, proportionately. And the poor Presiding Officer in charge of that polling unit? He’s the one who gets prosecuted. The small fish.
So, why the half-measures? Why go hard on some things and tiptoe around others? The Chairman of the House Committee on Electoral Matters, Adebayo Balogun, tried to explain. He said the original plan was massive. They wanted to repeal the entire Electoral Act of 2022 and replace it with a shiny new Electoral Bill 2025.
He said his committee had these grand ideas, pulled from talks with experts and the public. “These included early voting, inmate voting, the replacement of the Permanent Voters’ Card with more technology-driven accreditation mechanisms… and other innovations,” Balogun explained. It was meant to be a total overhaul.
But the legislative process is a funny thing. Balogun said, “In legislative practice, repeal and reenactment is appropriate where proposed changes fundamentally transform the identity of an existing law.” Basically, he’s saying that since they didn’t approve the really big, game-changing stuff, they couldnt justify throwing out the whole 2022 Act. So they settled for just amending it.
We’re left with a tougher law, for sure. But is it the game-changer we were promised? Or just tinkering around the edges while the real games are played somewhere else. Time will tell. It always does.
