The retreat of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) saw members of the Senate Committee on INEC and the House of Representatives Committee of Electoral Matters working towards an improved electoral framework for Nigeria. The Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2019 sponsored by the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege seems to have been at the core of the discussions at the meeting. Omo-Agege, while speaking at the meeting, underscored that the effects of court judgments on pre-election matters constituted a need for electoral reforms. INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu made the point that the electoral reform process could see the removal of encumbrances to the deployment of technology in elections, especially in the accreditation of voters and the transmission of results during elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Electoral Offences Commission Bill, which passed second\nreading in the Senate on Wednesday, March 4 has been welcomed as a possible response\nto the menace of rising electoral offences in the country. Among other\nprovisions, the Bill proposes an imprisonment term of 20 years or a N40million\nfine for destruction of electoral materials by any person during elections. It\nalso proposes an imprisonment term of 10 years or a fine of N40million or both\nfor any person who incites violence during election. It further proposes a 20\nyear imprisonment term without an option of fine for a judicial officer ,\nofficer of a court or tribunal who is found to have prevented electoral justice\nbefore, during or after an election. The Bill appears to have provided punitive\nmeasures which should serve as sufficient deterrents. However, the attitude of\nsecurity agencies who will be \nresponsible for arresting offenders remains an issue of concern, as\ndiligent prosecution of offenders will only be possible where the Police and\nother agencies deployed for election duty discharge their responsibilities in a\nnon-partisan manner. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The retreat of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) saw members of the Senate Committee on INEC and the House of Representatives Committee of Electoral Matters working towards an improved electoral framework for Nigeria. The Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2019 sponsored by the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege seems to have been at the core […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-inec-and-nass-discuss-electoral-reforms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}