The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has disclosed that old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes worth more than N500 billion were hoarded by politicians to buy votes in the Saturday, February 25, 2023, elections.
According to AbudulRasheed Bawa, the EFCC Chairman, who made this disclosure, the money was yet to return to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in line with its cash swap policy that follows the currency redesigning project.
The EFCC boss, however, warned that all machineries have been put in place to drastically reduce the influence of vote buying in the election.
Bawa expressed confidence that the agency would record more success compared to the recent Ekiti and Osun governorship polls because of the naira redesign policy.
“As you know we have new currency in circulation, it is easier to track this new currency by their numbers, the CBN knows the serial numbers of these currencies as they distributed them across the country.
“So we even have another added responsibility because all the funds that we will eventually recover out there in the field that would be used for buying of votes; we can actually check and see whether they are genuine currencies that are gotten from ATMs and across the counter or somebody somewhere gave them in bulk and gave politicians the money,” he added.
He assured that the EFCC would do everything to ensure that “dirty money does not find its way into the electoral process,” by stopping all those who wants to buy votes from doing so.
Bawa said although the commission’s operatives are not many but, all of them would be deployed to the field to prevent vote buying.
He called on all Nigerians to buy into the fight if the country must get rid of corruption which is the cause of the insecurity and economic woes facing the country.
He specifically charged Nigerians to “say something” when they “see something,” by reporting incidents of vote buying in their areas through dedicated phone lines.
