By Ade Martins And Lucy Caulkett-
A corrupt Nigerian politician has been arrested for alleged money laundering after being caught with $498,100 (£414,000) in cash a day before general elections.
The piles of US dollars were found by police inside Chinyere Igwe’s car, with he politician providing no evidence as to how he got the money.
Mr Igwe,(pictured) a former lawmaker, and an opposition PDP member of the House of Representatives, was also caught with a long list of people the money was to be given to, according to Nigerian cops.
The embarrassing discovery exposes the scale of corruption in Nigerian politics, as politicians seek to bribe their way to power, undermining the democratic process of fairness to elect a genuine leader. The alarming discovery raises questions of how many other corrupt influencers are yet to be caught attempting to pervert the elctions.
Nigerian politicians are notorious for vote buying and influencing elections outcomes and leadership positions for candidates with money, often distorting the correct state of play in various political situations.
A number of court rulings in the past few weeks have nullified the governorship candidate choice for various parties on the grounds of fraud, as powerful political players are found to use huge money to influence decision making in the party.
Nigeria has recently issued new bank notes, partly in order to make it harder for politicians to use sums of money to bribe voters, but the initiative has proved problematic for ordinary citizens who have struggled to pursue their daily lives.
President Buhari eventually reversed the freeze on cash, but it has still led to huge queues for hours outside banks for citizens desperate for cash.
In a Twitter thread, police in Rivers State, where Mr Igwe was arrested, urged “all contestants and political parties to comply strictly with provisions of the Electoral Act and other relevant laws”.
Compliance with rules is something alien to a large number of politicians who prefer to buy election result than to earn it legitimately.
Saturday’s elections are predicted to be the most competitive since the end of military rule in 1999, with all three major candidates – Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Bola Tinubu of the governing APC , fighting a very tight race for power.
Obi who has injected some life into the normally insignificant Labour party has been leading a number of polls in the country, but is meant to be an underdog in an election that has in past times favoured the main ruling party.
With a huge following from Nigerian’s youths, he presents solid competition for the ruling party.
International observers are already in Nigeria to confirm the legitimacy of the outcome, but some analysts say the level of advance trickery in the country means corrupt individuals in high places are still capable of evading detection and rigging the election.
However, more sophisticated technology being used in Saturday’s elections for the first time offers a glimmer if hope that Africa’s most populous country will deliver a credible election for the first time in many decades.
Nigerian police are yet to determine precisely which persons were intended to be recipients of the huge cash found in the politician’s vehicle.
There had been concerns that it might not be possible to hold the election in parts of the country, which is facing an Islamist insurgency in the north-east, a nationwide kidnapping-for-ransom crisis and a separatist insurgency in the south-east.
A senatorial candidate for the opposition Labour Party, Oyibo Chukwu, was killed on Wednesday in the south-eastern Enugu State while he was returning from the campaign trail. Police have blamed the separatist group Ipob for the killings. Ipob has not yet commented.
The authorities have ordered the closure of all land borders for Saturday’s vote starting from midnight for 24 hours, to stop foreign nationals from trying to vote.
On Thursday INEC revealed a total of 87.2 million voter cards had been collected.
Over 93 million people had registered to vote, with some six million people still not unable to collect their cards and so would not be able to cast their ballots.
In a shameful case of what appears to be corruption, voter cards dumped in a bush were discovered by a hunter- a sign that corrupt efforts are still being made to illegally prevent groups of people from voting.
An investigation is expected to be undertaken into the motives of Mr Igwe, who started his political career in Rivers State as a Councillor of the Port Harcourt City Legislative Assembly in 1991, before becaming a member of the Rivers State Government Projects Monitoring Committee from 2000 to 2002.
Honest Nigerians hopeful of a change will expect an example to be made of Igwe by the justice system.