Illegitimacy of electoral mandates biggest source of insecurity in Nigeria – Odinkalu

Former Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, says illegitimacy of electoral mandate is the biggest source of insecurity in Nigeria.

Odinkalu made this remark on Thursday when he appeared as a guest in an interview on Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’.

He said when people discover that their votes don’t count and judges have been bought, they resort to violence.

Odinkalu was reacting to the national debate on the establishment of state police to curtail the upsurge of insecurity in the country.

“We cannot discuss insecurity and policing and forget all the other elements in the complex. The single biggest source of insecurity in Nigeria is the illegitimacy of electoral mandates. Let us be very brutal about that.

“When people discover that electoral mandates, their votes don’t count, the courts are not working for them, and judges have been bought, they resort to violence and vigilantism.

“So the diagnosis is relevant here to the prescription of management mechanisms.

“Unless, therefore, we want to deal with policing outside the diagnosis, in which case we can as well do that and create a new set of pathologies. But if we don’t want to do that, then we’ve got to be very careful,” he said.