President Muhammadu Buhari’s declining for the third time in a row to sign into law the Electoral Act [Amendment] bill 2018 caused much surprise and anxiety all across this country. The Presidency announced last Friday that the president withheld assent to the bill, which the National Assembly sent to him a month ago, because signing it now will disrupt the 2019 general elections.
Buhari said with only a few months to the 2019 elections, coming into being of a new electoral law would cause a lot of uncertainty. Lack of coming into being of a new law has also created a lot of uncertainty. It was the third time the president rejected this bill seeking to amend the Electoral Act 2010, having earlier done so on March 13 and again on September 3. His reason in March was that MPs inserted a provision to change the sequence of elections. It provided for three staggered elections, with the National Assembly polls to hold first, followed by governorship/state assembly and then presidential polls. Many Nigerians supported the president’s stance on that occasion because the MPs’ stance was politically self-serving.
On September 3 when the president again withheld assent to a bill that had expunged the controversial election sequence provisions, his reason was that there were certain typographical errors. Since then, public pressure was brought to bear on the National Assembly to expedite action and pass the bill again. It is for this reason that withholding presidential assent on the grounds that it is too late in the day shocked many Nigerians.
Most public concern centres around the sanctity of the electronic card reader, the device INEC introduced in 2015 to read the chip in the permanent voters’ card during a voter’s accreditation at the polling station. the success of the 2015 elections owed a lot to the card reader, which stopped our politicians’ age-old habit of snatching and stuffing ballot boxes. However, the Supreme Court ruling of 2016 in the case of the Rivers State governorship election has caused concern. The apex court ruled that information from the card reader alone cannot be used to prove that there was over-voting in that election, hence the clamour to entrench card reader in the Electoral Act, rather than in INEC guidelines.
We believe that it is not too late to do this. If, as the president said, a new law could cause confusion, at least the card reader should be entrenched in a hurriedly amended Electoral Act. Nothing should be left to chance with respect to this all-important gadget that has brought a sea-change in our elections. Already, the opposition parties are alleging that the president and his ruling party want to oust the card reader because they are planning to rig the elections. We believe the president’s assurance that he is committed to a free, fair and transparent election. We quickly add that his withholding assent from the amended Electoral Act is bound to be misread by the public and the international community and could send the wrong message to desperate politicians that hijacking and stuffing ballot boxes is fashionable once again.
We therefore urge the President and National Assembly to get together, pass into law and assent to an amendment that only entrenches the card reader into the Electoral Act. Other things can wait until later. This one will not in any way disrupt poll planning, as the president fears. If anything, it will go a long way to protect the election’s integrity.
