A group of protesters under the aegis of Alliance of Civil Society Organisations for Expansion of Electoral and Democratic Space (ACCESS) stormed the National Assembly about a week ago accusing the leadership of the institution of deliberate foot-dragging over the passage of the Electoral Amendment Bill 2021. In the course of the protest, they challenged the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, to prove to Nigerians that the delay in the passage of the bill was not aimed at the forthcoming 2023 elections.
According to the spokesman of the group, Ariyo Dare Atoye, Nigerians were worried that the National Assembly had failed to meet two deadlines for the passage of the electoral bill. He said the group was aware that the joint committee of the institution had completed the technical processes needed for the third reading and passage of the bill but that the leaderships of the two chambers were allegedly obstructing its transmission to plenary and for the president’s assent.
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Against the backdrop of the critical improvements the bill is intended to usher into the country’s political fortunes, it remains a travesty that it had been subjected to an odyssey in the labyrinthine processes of the National Assembly for years. The bill under consideration is an amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 and the Electoral Act (Amendment Act) 2015, which was to be assented to in 2019, but failed to see the light of day following the decline of assent by President Muhammadu Buhari then. In a letter he sent to then president of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, Buhari argued that the bill had come too close to the 2019 polls and that assenting to it would create confusion in the exercise.
To accentuate its strategic relevance to the country’s politics, the new bill offers provisions on enhanced use of technology in polls management such as digitization of the electoral processes, including electronic voting and admission of card readers as evidence in litigations, improved internal democracy in political parties, especially with respect to emergence of candidates for electoral offices and secret balloting, among several other changes. Given the endemic weaknesses of the country’s electoral culture and especially the need to curtail political turbulences which trail each polls exercise, it is crystal clear that without signing of the bill by the President this time, subsequent polls exercises may end up further setting the country back politically.
With the forthcoming Anambra State gubernatorial polls scheduled for November 6, 2021, and the presidential election, billed for February 6, 2023, public interest in the new Electoral Act has risen to a crescendo, as it is expected to provide the statutory framework for the exercise. A major cause of worry to a wide field of stakeholders, is that the situation may be turning out as a repeat of what happened in 2018 when President Muhammadu Buhari declined to assent to the amended act citing the closeness of the new law to the 2019 polls.
This is why the current 9th National Assembly needs to rise to the challenge of delivering on the Electoral Bill as scheduled. Nothing short of ensuring that the bill is passed and delivered to the president for assent before they proceed for their annual leave this month, shall be accepted by Nigerians.
It needs to be appreciated that some aspects of the build-up to the 2023 polls are already projecting it as an exercise that will make or mar Nigeria. The situation therefore calls for extreme discretion by the National Assembly leadership.
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