Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Harcourt Abaribe,
PDP Abia, has given reasons the Senate rejected President Muhammadu Buhari’s
bill to amend Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act 2022 that was recently
passed into law.
According to him, amending the section would be going
against the civil service norms and would be injurious to the well-being of the
society.
While signing the 2022 Electoral Amendment Bill on February
25, President Buhari complained that the provision constituted fundamental
defect, saying it was in conflict with extant constitutional provisions.
He said Section 84 (12) constitutes a disenfranchisement of
serving political office holders from voting or being voted for at conventions
or congresses of any political party.
The section reads: “No political appointee at any level
shall be voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any
political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any
election.”
He stated that the provision introduced qualification and
disqualification criteria that ultra vires the Constitution by way of importing
blanket restriction and disqualification.
Shortly after signing the Bill into law, President Buhari
sent an amendment to the National Assembly, which the Senate refused to pass
into law, last week.
Speaking on the issue, weekend, Abaribe, who is angling to
succeed Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State in 2023, said the Electoral Act
is a piece of good legislation that is meant to cure the ills of previous
electoral acts and makes rigging of
elections almost impossible.
Aside providing for direct transmission of results from
polling booths, it empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission,
INEC, to reject results its officers announced under duress.
On the controversies trailing Section 84 (12), Abaribe said
the section codifies what already is supposed to be the norm in our civil
service and society.
“Before, the norm is if you want to run for office, you
resign. Now, people stay in office and use state resources to run for office
and the office suffers. No law is made to be retrogressive. It did not say you
should resign three months to the elections. It says if you want to be a
delegate, you will have to resign. The
stipulation as to time is what is in the Civil Service Rule, that is 30 days
before primaries or congresses you ought to resign.
“The parties have not set their dates for primaries. When
they do the 30 days will now set in. The President it conflicts with the
Constitution. We don’t know what he meant. What we know is that if you are in
office and running without resigning, your office will suffer. When we got his
letter, we said he must have been misadvised by some people.”
On Abia, he said currently he is the most experienced and
capable person to take the state to greater heights after Ikpeazu’s tenure.
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