Electoral Act Amendment: Who is that Fool Fooling Nigerians?

Ecological Fund: An Epicentre of Corruption

Before the expiration of the mandatory 21 days to assent to the Amended Electoral Act 2021, President Buhari flew out to Turkey for a three-day Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit and flew back on the deadline. Two days after, precisely on Tuesday, December 21, 2021, he forwarded a letter to the National Assembly, explaining why he couldn’t assent to the amended Act.
In his defence, he cited financial, legal, security consequences and weak political foundation based on advice from government ministries, departments and security agencies after a review for rejecting the amended bill.
President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawal and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, at the opening of plenary penultimate Tuesday, read the letter from President Buhari on his rejection of the Electoral Act 2021(Amendment) Bill.
President Buhari said, among other things that “The d irect implication of institutionalizing only direct primaries is the aggravation of over monetization of the process as there will be much more people a contestant needs to reach out to, thereby fuelling further corruption and abuse of office by incumbents who may resort to public resources to satisfy the increased demands and logistics of winning party primaries.
“Indirect primaries or collegiate elections are part of internationally accepted electoral practices. More so, direct primaries are not free from manipulations and do not guarantee the emergence of the will of the people especially in circumstances like ours where it is near impossible to sustain a workable implementation framework or structure thereof.
“The conduct of direct primaries across the 8,809 federal wards across the length and breadth of the country will lead to a significant spike in the cost of conducting primary elections by parties as well as increase in the cost of monitoring such elections by INEC who has to deploy monitors across the wards each time a party is to conduct direct primaries for the presidential, gubernatorial and legislative posts. The addition of these costs with the already huge cost of conducting general elections will inevitably lead to huge financial burden on the political parties, INEC and the economy in general at a time of dwindling revenues.
“The amendment, as proposed, is a violation of the underlying spirit of democracy, which is characterized by freedom of choices of which political party membership is a voluntary exercise of the constitutional right of freedom of association”
Both chambers of the national assembly reacted immediately to the refusal of the president to assent to the amended bill. The Senate bristled and drew a line with the executive; it adjourned plenary till the following week, to enable it decide on how to override the president on the 2010 Electoral Act (amendment) Bill 2021. The Senators immediately set about gathering signatures to veto the President’s last minute decision while members of the Green chamber mellowed out and deferred action to 2022 when they resume from the end-of-year recess. What should Nigerians expect from the Green chamber after the break? There will be nothing new. Those members will only follow the path of the executive to bury the amended bill they initiated. We wait to see!
“As it is, it falls on the parliament to decide the way forward”, said Speaker Gbajabiamila during his end-of-year speech to members of the Green chamber on Tuesday, December 21, 2021.
“When we resume next year, we will decide it together. We must not throw away with the bathwater”. But from all indications and from the body language of those members in the Green chamber, the baby will eventually be thrown away with the birth water because they were planted in leadership of the Green chamber not to challenge the executive but to dance to its tunes. Challenging the executive to them is an abomination. It’s a typical case of he who pays the piper dictates the tune.
By the following Wednesday morning of December 22, 2021, Senators gave the impression that they were bent on vetoing the executive, flaunting 75 signatories among them as indication that they had got more than the required 2/3 majority to follow through their threat. By afternoon, the senatorial resolve had hit the rocks. The senior lawmakers failed to override the President’s veto on the 2010 Electoral Act (amendments) Bill 2021.
President of the Senate Ahmed Lawan, as usual and characteristic of him had intervened with cold water poured on the matter. He gave three reasons why it was impracticable to carry out their advertised threat. He said after the executive session with members, the senate decided to consult with members of the lower chamber on the matter; since the lower chamber had proceeded on recess, it would be proper to wait till January after resumption of the members; and that members should use the intervening recess period to consult with their constituencies. The president of the senate sounded funny by wasting his time suggesting the impossible because most of those members in the Green chamber hardly visit their constituencies for anything until election period for the usual deceit and pretence for votes. Ahmed Lawal should know by now that 2023 will change the narrative for the good of the system.
For many Nigerians who had been referring to the 9th National Assembly as “rubber stamp” of the executive, because they feel it always beholds to the executive since the intra-party aided election of its leadership in an APC dominated assembly, the collapse of the Senators threat was expected. The Green chamber after the break would follow suit. No doubt about that because they are robots!
What could have amazed them however, was that the senators could not defend decisions they painstakingly took themselves on the direct primary clause, which they inserted into the Electoral Act after yielding to public and stakeholder’s pressure to include electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act Amendment.
Also President Buhari acted true to type despite promising Nigerians during one of his foreign trips that he would bequeath a legacy of transparent and credible electoral system. His rejection to assent to the amended Electoral Act will be his fifth time in seven years of withholding assent to the Act.
In 2018, he refused to sign Electoral Act amendment bills transmitted to him by the Bukola Saraki led most robust 8th National Assembly four times.
The first time was in February 2018. His grouse was that the amendment bill contained provisions that rendered the sequence of elections; in June, both chambers of the national assembly worked on the bill and resent it; he vehemently refused to sign. A month later, in July he cited increased costs of conducting elections as reason and withheld his assent.
Then few weeks to the February 13, 2019 general elections, he sent a letter dated December 6, 2019, addressed to the Senate President Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara, saying that signing the bill close to preparation for the 2019 elections would cause confusion and lead to uncertainty in the polity.
He promised to sign the bill after the 2019 elections but he never did. Now in 2021, before INEC commenced preparations for the forthcoming elections in Ekiti and Osun states in June 2022, he rejected the amendment to the 2021 Electoral Bill, citing finance, insecurity and legal consequences as reasons that cannot convince a democratic mind.
A powerful lobby put up by the state governors through the Nigeria Governors Forum, argued that direct primary clause infringes rights of the political parties, and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who is touted as Kebbi State 2023 gubernatorial aspirant joined the train with flimsy excuses bordering on insecurity and finance to empower INEC that swayed the president. Abubakar Malami SAN was at his best.
“More disappointing is that the President delayed his response until the expiration of time required for assenting to legislation until the date that the national assembly was proceeding for the X-mas and New Year break” said some PDP chieftains while reacting on the development.
On the final analysis, the 2021 Electoral Act Amendment Bill as initiated by both chambers of the National Assembly is a dead effort. It was murdered by President Muhammadu Buhari awaiting unceremonial burial by the initiators who are mere rubber stamps of the executive planted for such jobs.
I pity our democracy!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues

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