Credible 2019 polls underway: Senate passes Electoral Act Amendment Bill
…Corrects Buhari’s objections, awaits Reps’ concurrence for President’s assent
…Okays card reader for accreditation, limits campaign expenses by parties
The Senate on Tuesday, finally passed the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) Act 2010 (Amendment) Bill, 2018 into law.
The passage of the bill by the Senate now awaits the concurrence of the House of Representatives for onward transmission to President Muhammadu Buhari for his necessary assent.
President Buhari had refused to assent the Bill previously passed by the National Assembly for various reasons bothering on procedural errors.
Consequently upon the consideration of the report of the Committee on INEC after presentation by the Chairman of the Senate Committee, Senator Suleiman Nazif (PDP, Bauchi), the committee of the whole ratified the report and subsequently passed it.
The chairman of the committee said that all the issues raised by the President Buhari while declining his assent to this Bill have been captured and addressed.
A clause by clause dissection of the Bill was considered by the the committee of the whole before it satisfactorily passed the Bill for concurrence by the House of Representatives for harmonisation and onward transmission to President Buhari for his assent.
Such consideration include Clause: 14, amends Section 49 (4) of the Principal Act that deals with failure of a card reader.
Where a Smart Card Reader deployed for accreditation of Voters fails to function in any polling unit and a fresh Card Reader is not deployed three hours before the close of the election in that unit,
then the election shall not hold but be rescheduled and conducted within 24 hours thereafter, provided that where the total possible votes from all the affected card readers in the unit or units does not affect the overall result in the constituency or election concerned,
the commission shall notwithstanding the fact that a fresh card reader is not deployed as stipulated,.
Also, Clause: 24, amends Section 87 (13) of the Principal Act that deals with the issue of deadline for primary election.
The dates of the Primaries shall not be earlier than 150 days and not later than 90 days before the date of the election to the elective offices.
The same section also stipulates a specific period within which political party primaries are required to be held since the unintended consequences of leaving lNEC with only 9 days to collate and compile lists of candidates and political parties for the various elections.
This is because the earlier Electoral Act Amendment Bill did not properly amend Sections 31, 33 and 85 of the principal Act that stipulate times for submission of lists of candidates, publication of lists of candidates, notice of conventions and congresses for nominating candidates for elections.
The Bill will go a long way in further strengthening the nation’s Democracy and improve its Electoral process.
The main objectives of the amendment of this Bill include the following: to provide for the use of Card Readers and any other similar technological devices in conducting elections;
to provide a timeline for the submission of list of candidates as rightly captured in Section 31 (6) and 85 (l) of the Bill; to identify criteria for substitution of candidates, limit of campaign expenses; and to address noticed problems related to the omission of names of candidates or logo of political parties.
The issue of card readet was one of the contentious issue for the refusal by President Buhari to assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment).
The Presidency has said the Card Reader was not included in the latest Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2018.
The Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, had in an attempt to clarify the contentious issues, said it was necessary to guard against false allegations by opposition politicians that the card reader provision in the Bill was one of the reasons Buhari withheld assent to it.
According to him, the card reader provision addressed by section 49 of the Principal Act was completely excluded.
He said, “It is not in anywise, part of the provisions of the bill forwarded to the President on August 3, 2018, and could therefore not form part of the consideration of the President.”
He though agreed that there was card reader provision in the two previous amendments of the Bill, it was never mentioned as a subject of disagreement between the President and the National Assembly.
He said: “For further clarity, the Bill of February 20 had 43 clauses, and the revised Bill of June 27 had 41 clauses.
“The current further revised Bill of August 3, which now excludes the card reader, has just 15 clauses in the absolute wisdom of the National Assembly.
“And the President has no constitutional or legal authority to add or remove any provision to or from what the National Assembly has transmitted to him.’’
The president’s aide noted that by withholding assent to latest transmission that excluded the card reader provision, Buhari had actually preserved the card reader.
This, he explained, was an opportunity for the lawmakers to restore the card reader provision when reconsidering the Bill “in its absolute legislative discretion’’.
