Chairman, Yenagoa branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Dr. Anthony Okorodas, yesterday, identified electoral fraud as the worst form of corruption, saying that it robs the people of their right to chose who governs them.

According to him, electoral fraud engenders bitterness not only in the politicians who are immediate victims of the fraud, but also in the disenfranchised citizens, who feel cheated and brutally raped politically.

Okorodas, at a lecture at the annual law week of the National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN, Yenagoa centre, said: “A true, incorruptible and independent judiciary is crucial to the survival and sustenance of the nation’s nascent democracy.”

Speaking on True judicial Independence: An instrument for sustaining Nigerian Democracy, he said it was an irony in Nigeria today, that the most important element of modern-day democracy, which is the conduct of periodic election, was now the greatest source of threat to the nation’s embryonic democratic system of government.

“It is sad to note that our electoral process is characterised by violence and countless forms of corrupt practices. While in general, electoral disputes are to be expected in a democracy, the level of fraud and acrimony that is associated with Nigerian elections is far beyond what a civilized society could safely tolerate,” he said.

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