A civil society organization in Nigeria, the Concerned Nigerian group has called for the prosecution of those involved in the forgery and smuggling of names into the recall register of the just concluded recall verification process for the Senator representing Kogi West senatorial district Senator Dino Melaye. In a statement released by the group convener Deji Adeyanju and secretary Theophilus Abu Agada, the group stated that as one of the accredited election monitoring groups for the recall, it discovered that a lot of fictitious names were inserted into the register while the names of individuals that died as far back as two years ago were allegedly found in the register. Also several individuals protested the inclusion of their names in the recall register as they never filled the recall register in the first place.
The group enjoins INEC to prosecute those behind these anomalies while they also encourage individuals whose names were forged into the recall register to approach a court of law for redress while the group will be willing to provide the necessary legal representation.
The statement by the group couldn’t have come at a better time other than this, the poor turnout of the recall which was put at 5.34% by INEC to say the least was shameful as it was a total waste of time and tax payers funds, it also means the recall was not initiated by the constituents of the embattled Senator rather it was a politically motivated one as alleged by the Senator himself. The Prosecution will help in serving as deterrent to other group of individuals that want to engage in such acts for political purpose as seen in the proposed recall of Senator Eyinnanya Abaribe by some group of individuals in his constituency for ‘abusing’ President Buhari.
The recall process of a Senator is lawful and constitutional, however the necessary checks should be put in place to prevent abuse and misuse of the process.
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