…NASS c’ttee adopts 4th version of Electoral Act amendment bill
…Corrected bill contains more sections to strengthen INEC
The National Assembly on Tuesday made vital adjustment to the Electoral Bill with the inclusion of the clause recommending the use of card reader for the conduct of the 2019 general elections.
But the lawmakers claimed that there was never a time the provision for card reader was expunged from any of the three previous version sent to President Muhammadu Buhari.
The parliament also agreed with observations raised by President Buhari in the rejected third version of the 2018 Electoral Bill by effecting amendments on affected sections.
But a section which deals with added laws on commission of party logo on ballot papers was deleted.
This will put to rest power play between the two arms of government over the reformation of the nation’s electoral process which has lingered for months.
The President had in his refusal to give assent to the third version of the amendment bill listed about 14 contentious areas in the 2010 Electoral Act (Amendment ) Bill 2018 that must be addressed by the National Assembly.
These observations were accordingly addressed in the 4th version of the bill adopted by the joint committee of the National Assembly on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday.
Chairman of the joint committee, Senator Suleiman Nazif (PDP, Bauchi North) while briefing journalists at the end of the committee meeting, said the affected sections are 9(1A, 9(B5), 18 (1-4), 19(4), 30(1), 31(1) and 31(7). Others are 36(3), 44(3-4), 67(a-d), 87(2), 87(14) and 1124.
While section 9(1A) deals with voters registers in electronic format and manual or hard copy format, section 18 (14) deals with process of replacement of voters card by the INEC on demand by voters which it states must not be done less than 30 days before election.
Section 36(3) of the adopted bill makes provision for constitutional way out on sudden death of candidate of political party in the course of election as it happened in 2016 Kogi gubernatorial election.
The section states: “If after the commencement of poll and before the announcement of the final result and declaration of a winner, the leading candidate dies, (a), the commission shall, being satisfied of the fact of the death, suspend the election for a period not exceeding 21 days.
“(b) The political party whose candidate died may, if it intends to continue to participate in the election, conduct a fresh primary within 7 days of the death of its candidate and submit a new candidate to replace the dead candidate.
“(c) Subject to paragraphs (a) and (b), the commission shall continue with the election, announce the final result and declare a winner”.
Nazif said that at no time was provision for usuage of card reader deleted in any of the versions of the electoral bills.
According to him, the adopted 4th electoral bill is a harmonised version of the 2nd and 3rd one.
The Daily Times recalls that the first version of the bill forwarded to President Buhari in February this year by the federal lawmakers was rejected as a result of introduction of new sequence of election provided for in section 25(1) of the bill.
The second version forwarded to the President in June after removal of the new sequence of elections provisions, was outrightly vetoed by the President by not considering it in anyway before it got constitutionally expired on his table on the 26th of July, 2018.
But the new version has to be approved by the committee of the whole before it could be forwarded again to the President for his assent.
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