Last week, the National Assembly transmitted the Electoral Bill, 2021 to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent. It comes amidst protests by State sponsors under the aegis of the Governors\u2019 Forum calling for the President to reject the National Assembly\u2019s prescription of direct primaries as the only mode for selecting candidates for election by political parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Governors and National Assembly members have\nhad to contest whether the choice of candidates by political parties should be\nby direct or indirect primaries. Under the system of direct primaries, members\nof political parties choose their candidates for elective positions, as\ndistinct from the method of indirect primaries which only allows select\ndelegates of the parties to decide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legislators contend that the powers of\nGovernors to handpick delegates and influence their selection of candidates has\nbeen used arbitrarily and to the detriment of those not favoured by the Governors.\nThe current Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) allows for selection of candidates\nby direct and indirect primaries. Nigerians appear however to be rankled by the\nping-pong of arguments between the Governors and National Assembly members.\nCitizens are clear in expressing that their larger concern is about how to\nachieve improved and credible elections in Nigeria, rather than the political\nintrigues within the political class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Citizens are however calling on President Muhammadu\nBuhari to assent to the Electoral Bill as soon as possible, in the light of\nextensive efforts by election stakeholders towards the actualisation of a new\nelectoral law and more importantly, in the interest of deepening democracy in\nNigeria. Anybody or group of persons who are not satisfied with certain\nprovisions in the bill may consider proposing amendments after it has been\npassed into law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The need for a new electoral law became imperative\nto address bottlenecks in election administration and provide a legal framework\nthat empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deploy\ntechnological solutions and other extensive reforms to Nigeria\u2019s elections. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, the National Assembly transmitted the Electoral Bill, 2021 to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent. It comes amidst protests by State sponsors under the aegis of the Governors\u2019 Forum calling for the President to reject the National Assembly\u2019s prescription of direct primaries as the only mode for selecting candidates for election by political parties. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","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=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2398,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions\/2398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}