The National Assembly has transmitted the revised Electoral Act Amendment Bill to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent, The PUNCH learnt on Monday .
The President had refused to sign the first version of the bill into law.
A source in the National Assembly disclosed to journalists in Abuja that the bill was transmitted last week .
The source said , “ The amended Electoral Act has been transmitted to Mr President since Monday last week . He has it now . The National Assembly is expecting him to quickly assent to it because of the deadline for such amendment ahead of the 2019 general elections. ”
The legislature had on June 7 , 2018 passed the revised version of the bill , expunging the controversial clauses , including the one that re -ordered general elections sequence .
On June 7 , 2018 , while adopting the report by the Senate Committee on INEC , the Deputy President of the Senate , Ike Ekweremadu , who presided over the session , noted that the controversial clauses in the bill had been pulled out of the new version.
Ekweremadu said , “Before we go into the consideration , let me quickly make some quick clarifications . One is that when we passed the Electoral Act earlier in the year , the President returned it with observations .
“ From the report we have here, it means that those areas that appear to be controversial or where the President had some issues , no matter how we feel, whether we like it or not , whether we believe in what he said or not, that is not the issue now ; what is important now is that to save the other provisions (clauses ), our committee resolved to remove those aspects . They may come up maybe some other time but for now , they are not part of this process . That has been removed to make the rest non -controversial . ”
Ekweremadu said the amendment would enhance the credibility of the 2019 general elections. He also expressed the hope that INEC , politicians and the electorate would find the amendments useful.
“ We hope and believe that within a short period , the President will find it necessary to sign this bill into law , ” he had said .
Source: PUNCH.
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