President Bola Tinubu has sent the names of three nominees to the National Assembly for screening and confirmation as Commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The nominees include Abdulrazak Tukur from Katsina State as National Commissioner representing the North West zone, Prof. Sunday Aja Nwambam from Ebonyi State as National Commissioner representing the South East zone and Prof. Saseyi Ibiyemi as Resident Electoral Commissioner representing Ondo State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President\nTinubu\u2019s nomination of a National Commissioner for INEC from Katsina State has\nraised questions about equitable representation at INEC. Since its creation in\n1998, INEC has always had its 12-membership number split equally among the six geo-political\nzones \u2013 two representing each zone and then a National Chairman who heads the\nCommission. And then, the two from each zone are always split in such a manner\nas to ensure rotation among the States in the zone. The President appears to\nhave however, breached this practice by appointing a new National Commissioner\nfor the North West zone, increasing the North West representation to three\ninstead of two. It is unclear at this time why he has done so. What is also\nunclear is that the INEC presently has only one National Commissioner from the\nSouth East after a vacancy occurred when Festus Okoye\u2019s tenure ended in July\n2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although\nthe President appears to have made a fresh nomination for National Commissioner\nfrom the South East yesterday, November 19, it is unclear whether he is\nunilaterally increasing the numbers of National Commissioners that is\nconstitutionally allowed. However, there are speculations that one of the National\nCommissioners from the North West may be resigning or be under pressure to resign, ahead of the\nend of his tenure. This has not been publicly disclosed and the said National\nCommissioner is still functioning in the position. The said Commissioner is\nfrom Katsina which is also the State of the new National Commissioner nominee\nfrom the North West, so that even if it were to be that the serving National Commissioner\nfrom Katsina State plans to resign or is being pressured to resign from the\nCommission, the nomination of another\nCommissioner from the same State would appear to contravene the practice of rotating\nNational Commissioners among the States in the geo-political zone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will be\nrecalled that the Senate Committee on INEC in the 9th<\/sup> National Assembly\noutrightly stated that it was \u201c\u2026\nunable to recommend Ms. Lauretta Onochie for confirmation as a National\nElectoral Commissioner<\/em>\u2026\u201d. The Committee based its decision on one of the\npetitions that it received against Onochie\u2019s nomination, being that she is from\nDelta State, the same State as a serving National Commissioner representing the\nSouth-South zone, May Agbamuche. The Committee stated that confirming her\nnomination will be a violation of the Federal Character Principle in section\n14(3) of the Nigerian Constitution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is important to note that the\nCommittee declined to recommend Onochie\u2019s confirmation because she is from the\nsame State as a serving National Commissioner, even though there was a vacancy\nfor a second slot for a National Commissioner from the South-South zone. In the\npresent situation, not only is there no vacancy for the North West zone, but\nthe nominee is from the same State (Katsina) as a serving National Commissioner\nfor the zone. In the light of the precedent created by the Senate Committee on\nINEC in the 9th<\/sup> National Assembly on a similar matter, it is expected\nthat the Committee would reject Tukur\u2019s nomination or the President should\nwithdraw same, in order not to violate the Federal Character Principle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Bola Tinubu has sent the names of three nominees to the National Assembly for screening and confirmation as Commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The nominees include Abdulrazak Tukur from Katsina State as National Commissioner representing the North West zone, Prof. Sunday Aja Nwambam from Ebonyi State as National Commissioner representing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3683","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\/3683","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=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3688,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions\/3688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}