{"id":2546,"date":"2022-03-10T10:48:44","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T10:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/?p=2546"},"modified":"2022-03-10T10:48:49","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T10:48:49","slug":"internal-party-squabbles-squash-buharis-attempt-to-amend-electoral-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/internal-party-squabbles-squash-buharis-attempt-to-amend-electoral-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Internal Party Squabbles Squash Buhari\u2019s Attempt to Amend Electoral Act"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Political squabbles within the ruling party may have been responsible for the outright rejection of President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s attempt to amend the Electoral Act 2022, a few days after assenting to it. It will be recalled that on 25<sup>th<\/sup> February 2022, while assenting to the Electoral Act 2022, President Buhari had said he was signing the bill in the expectation that the National Assembly will immediately amend section 84(12) of the Electoral Act. He followed this up with a letter on 28<sup>th<\/sup> February 2022, forwarding an executive bill to amend the said section 84(12). The section provides as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<strong><em>No political Appointee at any level shall be a\nvoting delegate or be voted for at the Convention or Congress of any political\nparty for the purpose of the nomination of candidates of any election<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>.<\/em><\/strong><em>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President\nBuhari hinged justification for seeking amendment to section 84(12) on the\nclaim that it contravenes <strong>sections 40 and 42<\/strong> of the 1999 Nigerian\nConstitution, which provide for the right to association and the right to\nfreedom from discrimination, respectively. According to him, the provision disenfranchises serving political office holders from\nvoting or being voted for at political party convention or congress for nomination purposes where it holds earlier than 30 days to the election. He added that the only expectation placed on serving political office\nholders within the context of the Constitution is resignation, withdrawal or retirement\nat least 30 days before the date of the election as provided\nin&nbsp;<strong>section 66(1)(f)<\/strong>&nbsp;of the Constitution. It is important to note that section 66 (1)(f) refers\nto persons seeking election into the Senate and House of Representatives and\nsection 107(1)(f) makes a similar provision for persons seeking election into\nthe State Houses of Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 9<sup>th<\/sup>\nNational Assembly has not been known to challenge or contradict the President\u2019s\nlegislative requests. Its rejection of the President\u2019s Electoral Bill amendment\ncame to many as a surprise. For close observers of the political intrigues\nsurrounding upcoming political primaries in the parties, this development was\nunsurprising. Close political watchers note that competing political interests\nand jostling, account for the rejection of the President\u2019s bill.&nbsp; Legislators seeking to be candidates for\nvarious elective positions in the upcoming general elections appear to have\nused legislative advantage to cut down the ambitions and aspirations of\nMinisters and other officials in the Executive who want to use the advantage of\ntheir offices to advance their candidacy to various positions ahead of the next\nelections. At the early stages of the current democratic dispensation, holders\nof executive positions in government have as a matter of practice been required\nto relinquish and resign those positions at least three months before political\nparty primaries. This practice was prevalent during the 8-year rule of\nPresident Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 \u2013 2007) and continued even until the end of\nthe rule of President Goodluck Jonathan in May 2015. Under President Muhammadu\nBuhari, this widely accepted and commendable practice appears to have been\njettisoned. Also worryingly jettisoned is the practice of excluding political\noffice holders at legislative or executive level from holding political party\npositions. Under the current dispensation, governors and even legislators have\nbeen appointed to concurrently hold the position of party chairmen or other\noffices while retaining their executive and legislative positions. This of\ncourse has had very damaging effect on governance and responsibility. With the\nSenate rejecting the President\u2019s Electoral Act amendment, it is expected that\nthe House of Representatives will not proceed with any consideration of the\nbill. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Political squabbles within the ruling party may have been responsible for the outright rejection of President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s attempt to amend the Electoral Act 2022, a few days after assenting to it. It will be recalled that on 25th February 2022, while assenting to the Electoral Act 2022, President Buhari had said he was signing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2546","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\/2546","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=2546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}