The National Assembly returned from its end-of-year vacation to revisit the Electoral Bill, 2021, which President Muhammadu Buhari had vetoed just before Christmas in 2021. In vetoing the Bill, the President had objected to the adoption of direct primaries as the only mode for the selection of the candidates for election by political parties. The President\u2019s veto had generated serious worry among Nigerians who expressed concern that the President\u2019s record of vetoing the Electoral Bill four times in a row since 2018 seemed to be a ploy to frustrate electoral reform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Resuming plenary, the Senate and House of\nRepresentatives on Wednesday, 19th<\/sup> January, responded to the President\nby adding indirect primaries as an additional mode for the selection of\ncandidates by parties. The Senate differed from the House of Representatives by\nincluding an additional mode \u2013 Consensus. This also raised concern of possible\ndelay in the passage of the Bill. After several behind-the-scene negotiations,\nboth houses returned to plenary on Tuesday, 25th<\/sup> January and\nrecommitted the Bill, having negotiated a definition of how Consensus could be\na mode for selection of candidates. Indeed, thresholds for this were set in the\nrecommittal of the Bill by both houses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the new amendments, provision is made for\nthe participation of all party members at designated centres in each ward of\nthe Federation, for direct primaries. Special Conventions or Congresses are\nalso to be held mandatorily to ratify the candidates with the highest number of\nvotes from the exercise, for each of the elective positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For the adoption of a consensus candidate,\nthe bill states that a political party will be required to secure the written\nconsent of all cleared aspirants for the particular position, indicating their\nvoluntary withdrawal from the race and their endorsement of the consensus\ncandidate. Where the party is unable to obtain this, then it shall revert to\nthe choice of direct or indirect primaries to nominate a candidate. Furthermore,\na Special Convention or nomination Congress shall be held to ratify the choice\nof consensus candidates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With these amendments now made, election\nstakeholders are satisfied that the National Assembly has adequately responded\nto the issues raised by President Muhammadu Buhari in his veto letter. The Bill\nis expected to be transmitted to the President at the end of this week. All\neyes are now on President Buhari to sign the Electoral Bill 2022. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The National Assembly returned from its end-of-year vacation to revisit the Electoral Bill, 2021, which President Muhammadu Buhari had vetoed just before Christmas in 2021. In vetoing the Bill, the President had objected to the adoption of direct primaries as the only mode for the selection of the candidates for election by political parties. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2476","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\/2476","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=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions\/2481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}