After months of politicking and lobbying, President Muhammadu Buhari, Friday last week, finally signed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill into law, bringing an end to the controversies and debate his delayed ascent had generated.
There is no doubt that the 9th Assembly of the Nigeria parliament enjoys a cordial relationship with the President Buhari led executive. In fact, too cordial for the liking of most Nigerians. However, the process that led to the birth of the Electoral Act 2022 has threatened this harmonious relationship.
There’s been series of back and forth from both the National Assembly and the Presidency bothering on the substances of the new bill. Most notably, few months to the 2019 general elections, the same bill was presented to the President by the National Assembly for his assent, a request which the president turned down.
The reason given by the President for refusing to append his signature to the bill was that it was too close to the 2019 general elections and didn’t want the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to run into challenges working with a new electoral reforms. The president then recommended that the elections be conducted within the legal framework of the pre-existing Electoral Act.
Shortly after the 2019 general elections, the 9th Assembly determined to push for the reform of elections and electoral processes in the country, both houses mandated its committees on INEC and Electoral Matters led by Senator Kabiru Gaya, Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, and Hon. Aishatu Jibril Duku, Chairman, House Committee on Electoral Matters, respectively, work expeditiously towards achieving this goal.
Through series of consultations by way of public hearings and proceedings with relevant professionals and stakeholders such as INEC, Civil societies groups, development partners, etc, the national assembly committees on INEC and Electoral Matters, were able to come up with a proposed new Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021.
The bill was transmitted to the president for assent, but was turned down. That has been the fate with the electoral amendment bill, as a series of back and forth ensued.
For instance, in November 2021, the bill was transmitted to the President for assent by the National Assembly, however, the president declined assent for a record five times.
The contentious clause then was the call to expunge the provision for the conduct of indirect primaries in the nomination of party candidates, so that henceforth candidates can only emerge through direct primaries.
President Buhari, in a letter to the National Assembly read on both floors on December 21 2021 stated that, “Arising from the review of the bill, you may wish to note that the conduct of elections for the nomination of party candidates solely via direct primaries as envisaged by the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 has serious adverse legal, financial, economic and security consequences which cannot be accommodated at the moment considering our nation’s peculiarities.”
According to Buhari, compulsory adoption of the direct primary model has implications on the rights of citizens to participate in the government, as envisaged by the constitution.
He also raised concern on the financial implications of limiting political parties to just direct primaries, which he lamented would demand huge logistical implications.
“The conduct of direct primaries across the 8,809 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 these 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 both the political parties, INEC and the economy in general at a time of dwindling revenues.
“The indirect consequences of the issues of high cost and monetisation are that it will raise financial crimes and constitute further strain on the economy. It will also stifle smaller parties without the enormous resources required to mobilise all party members for the primaries.”
When the National Assembly resumed for the 2022 Legislative Sessions on January 18th, the rejected Electoral Act Amendment Bill was of top priority on its table.
Both the Senate and the House of Representative sat and ironed out the issues raised by the President on the last rejection. A consensus was reached and it agrees to give room for political parties to decide on mode of it’s primary; going for either direct primaries, indirect primaries, or a consensus candidate.
This was swiftly put together and on January 31st 2022, the bill was sent to the President for his assent.
Having been in possession of the new bill for over three weeks, with no news coming from the presidency about the prospect of Mr President signing it into law, there was massive apprehension from all stakeholders as the deadline for the assent of the bill approaches.
Public affairs commentators expressed their concerns, that the President may not after all be committed to a reform of electoral process as he has alluded to in many of his public statements.
This brought about the February 22nd protest in the FCT organised by a coalition of civil society organisations.
The CSOs staged the protest at the Unity Fountain, Maitama in Abuja and were joined by people living with disabilities. The peaceful protest was led by the Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, Auwal Rafsanjani, the CSOs Situation Room Leader, Amaka Obi, and Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo.
On the morning of February 22nd, day of the protests, the Special Assistant to Mr President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, reassured Nigerians and especially the protesting CSOs that it was only a matter of hours and the bill would be signed.
Keeping to his words, on Friday, February 25, 2022, President Buhari finally put pen to paper as he signed the Electoral Act 2022 into law. Marking an end to over 5years of back and forth.
Despite the many years of delays, Nigerians have welcomed this news with great hope that the new law will bring about positive change in the electoral process and encourage a free and fair elections devoid of irregularities that has characterised previous elections.
Particularly the part of the new legislation that gives INEC the backings for electronic transmission of results.
Nigerians are hopeful that this will greatly reduce instances of hijacking of result sheets and ballot snatching since result sent from polling booth is automatically updated on INEC’s servers.
Another laudable provision of the Electoral Act 2022 is the redefining of over voting. This has been a reoccurring issue before every election tribunal in the past. With this new legislation, over voting is clearly defined to be the case when total votes cast in a polling unit exceeds number of accredited voters. This is a clear shift from the old law that defines total number of registered voters as the determining factor in the validity of votes in an election.
Here, the total number of accredited voters is the major determinant on the validity of votes in an election.
With the electoral Act in place, many are hopeful that issues of electoral fraud will be eliminated to give Nigerians the chance to really vote their leaders, in every sense of the word.
