Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, has warned that amending Nigeria’s Electoral Act will be meaningless if there is no political will to enforce existing laws, saying impunity and unchecked defections remain the real threats to the country’s democracy.

Falana made the remarks on Sunday during an interview on Arise Television.

According to him, Nigeria’s problem is not the absence of laws but the political class’s refusal to enforce them.

He added that ideology and the quality of representation no longer matter in Nigerian politics, as personal gains from defections have taken centre stage.

The senior advocate noted that elected officials routinely abandon the parties that brought them to power, defect to new parties, and face no consequences. He described this culture as a major danger to democratic governance.

“We operate in an atmosphere of reckless impunity. The ongoing amendment exercise is time wasting if there’s no enforcement. We have always had a very steep penalties on purchase of votes. Thuggery and the rest of them.

“But members of the political class, the ruling parties, have never sent the engine to arrest and deal with electoral offenders.

“As far back as 2008, the Wale panel recommended the establishment of an electoral offenses commission to arrest offenders and prosecute them. No regime, including the one that campaigned for electoral reforms, has ever thought of setting up that now, what is the big deal now?

“We want to increase campaign funds and nobody has ever complied with that. The only important political point in Nigeria today is the gale of defections, and nobody is talking of that, even in the proposed amendment,” he said.

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