Abstract
The Electoral Act, 2022 came into operation on 25th February, 2022. It repealed the Electoral Act, No. 6 of 2010. In an attempt to see that electoral offenders are severely punished, section 145(1) Electoral Act, 2022 provides that an offence under the Act shall be triable in a Magistrate Court or a High Court of a State in which the offence is committed, or the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Subsection (2) of the said section provides that a prosecution under the Electoral Act, 2022 shall be undertaken by legal officers of the commission or any legal practitioner appointed by it. From experiences, politicians will not respond to good behavior unless there is a perception that bad behavior will be severely punished. There is no doubt that combating electoral offences in Nigeria is an arduous task. There is a serious lacuna in our Electoral Act with respect to prosecution of electoral offenders. The problem lies with the seeming inability to prosecute and secure convictions of electoral offences. This lacuna accounts to why politicians see elections as a do-or-die affair. In this article, the writer is making a case for the establishment of electoral offences commission that shall see to the prosecution of the electoral offences committed during our elections. This will go a long way in ensuring free and fair elections in Nigeria.