Civil society to National Assembly: sanitise Electoral Act

   Civil society to National Assembly: sanitise Electoral Act

A Civil society, Yiaga Africa, has asked the National Assembly to immediately conclude work on the Electoral Amendment Bill and harmonise it to allow the Independent National Electoral Commission to transmit results electronically.

Yiaga Africa, in collaboration with other CSOs working to improve democratic governance in Nigeria, labelled the Senate version of the Electoral Amendment Bill that empowers the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to make decisions over INEC “as problematic and undemocratic.”

According to them, empowering the NCC to make decisions over the procedures of INEC is unconstitutional because the electoral body of any country is an executive body established by law independently and its decisions cannot be subjected to any other authority.

Programme Director, Yiaga Africa, Cynthia Mbamalu, who spoke at a stakeholders’ roundtable, regretted that the Bill does not capture all the desires and wishes of stakeholders in the Nigerian electoral process.

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Mbamalu insisted that the journey has not ended based on the fact that there are variations in the bill as passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly.

“The Legislature will do well to quickly convene a conference committee for harmonisation and onward transmission of the Electoral Amendment Bill to the Executive. Time indeed is of the essence in this regard.

“This roundtable is mainly for the leadership of the National Assembly to immediately constitute the conference committee and for the committee to ensure that, in their decision, citizens voices are reflected in the electoral amendment bill, one of that bill is clause 52, which is INECs power to transmit results electronically.”

“We believe that the commission is ready and capable to deploy electronic transmission of result. The house version of the bill gives INEC the discretion to decide the procedure for voting and transmission of results.