Vice President Yemi Osinbajo stated that an effective cashless strategy in Nigeria can help halt the rise in illicit election financing by allowing funds to be tracked.
On Monday, Osinbajo met with a delegation from the European Union Election Observation Mission led by Chief Observer Barry Andrews at the Presidential Villa.
“I think what we should be looking at is providing additional infrastructure,” the VP added. The cashless system has been really beneficial and aids in tracking. This type of infrastructure is useful for increasing financial inclusion, and the more the financial inclusion, the easier it is to track.”
Under the country’s existing election funding practices, “so much money may be spent without it being tracked,” according to Osinbajo.
While acknowledging the challenge in controlling election financing owing to cash transactions, Osinbajo stated that infrastructure issues must still be addressed in order for the country to have an efficient cashless system.
“It’s still difficult to seriously oversee election finance with cash transactions,” the VP stated.
On electoral offences, Osinbajo stated that the Electoral Violations Commission Bill is currently before the National Assembly and that “we expect that it would launch a new regime of dealing with electoral offences, which would be useful.”
“By and large, one should not expect INEC to be the investigator of election violations,” the VP said. I believe that law enforcement organizations should be in charge of arresting and prosecuting offenders on a state-by-state basis.”
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