Ajibola Basiru, spokesman of the senate, says there is no
error in the electoral act amendment bill passed by the upper legislative
chamber.
He spoke on Sunday at a town hall meeting on the electoral
bill organised by Yiaga Africa, a civil society organisation.
In December, President Muhammadu Buhari declined assent to
the bill over some concerns.
Buhari said adopting compulsory direct primary for political
parties “violates the spirit of democracy”.
Some civil society organisations (CSOs) also exposed some
errors in the bill.
Speaking after he was asked a question on how long it will
take to correct the errors and have the bill sent back to the president for
assent, Basiru said most of the speakers at the meeting took legislative
business as “pedestrian”.
“It is very important to set this in context. I find some of
the issues discussed here interesting — they are taking issues of legislation
to be pedestrian work,” the spokesman said.
“I want to also say that it is not correct that the national
assembly has done shoddy work on the electoral bill and I take that with
seriousness to say that out of 185 sections of the bill, we have a problem with
one section.
“Taking the issue of cross referencing to the level of the
national assembly doing a shoddy job, we don’t have any business being there if
the bill is not worthy of consideration.”
Afterwards, Seun Okinbaloye, host of the town hall meeting,
said: “It is not only one drafting error, I have 10… 17; I can pass it on to
you.”
Visibly angry at this point, Basiru said: “The errors you
are referring to are not in the copy of the bill that I have. I disagree. I
totally disagree that there is error. The copy of the bill the senate passed
has no error. Let them (CSOs) bring the source from where they got their
errors.”
“You cannot come on national television and undermine the
institution of the national assembly without facts and figures,” he added.
“I challenge you. Which copy are you using? Who issued it to
be the public document? This is a serious matter and I have to take it up.”
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