The Senate on Tuesday concluded moves to amend the Electoral Act to empower the president of the country to appoint the Secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!This followed the second reading of the Bill for an Act to amend the Electoral Act to provide for tenure of the Office of INEC Secretary and the use of electronic voting.
Leading the debate, the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, said the Bill was intended to consolidate on the gains of the Electoral Act, 2010.
Ekweremadu noted that the extant law only empowered the INEC to appoint a secretary without stating the duration such a person was to spend in office.
“The positive impact of the Electoral Act has not been a subject of doubt in our effort to operate a reliable electoral process in Nigeria.
“On specific terms, the Bill seeks to provide a renewable tenure of four years on the position of the secretary of the commission.
“The Bill also seeks to grant the commission the latitude to use electronic voting system when it is ready with the appropriate capacity and technology to do so,” he said.
Ekweremadu urged the Senate to ensure speedy passage of the Bill to enable it to positively impact on the electoral process, particularly ahead of the 2015 general election.
In his contribution, Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe noted that the Senate erred when it empowered INEC to appoint its secretary without specifying tenure for the office.
On electronic voting, Abaribe said INEC should be able to introduce electronic voting because it had the capacity to conduct electronic registration of voters.
“I don’t believe that we did right by empowering INEC to appoint a secretary and now we are coming back to set a tenure for the office.
“When you leave the appointment of INEC secretary to the commission, what stops the INEC chairman from appointing his relations or cronies as secretary?
“The President should be granted powers to do that appointment and the tenure of the secretary should be fixed like that of the chairman,” Abaribe stressed.
The Leader of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, observed that it was not proper to have vested INEC chairman with the power of appointing the secretary of the commission.
On electronic voting, Ndoma-Egba said that most electoral systems in the world allowed electronic voting and that INEC should be empowered to conform with the current realities whenever it acquired the capacity to do so.
“We can’t consign INEC to doing things that are not in line with the current realities where electronic voting is the in thing.
“The position of the INEC secretary is as important as that of the chairman. So, the president should appoint the secretary alongside the chairman,” he added.
While opposing the move to hold all elections in one day, Ndoma-Egba said that it would lead to “voter confusion and voter fatigue in a situation where violence erupts during the polls”.
Sen. Ahmed Lawal (APC-Yobe) urged the Senate to focus on provision of adequate funding for INEC to enable it conduct elections in more efficient and credible ways.
Lawal, however, said elections should hold in one day to prevent what he described as ‘bandwagon effect’ where the electorate would vote for candidates on the same platform as the president-elect.
But Sen. Barnabas Gemade (PDP-Benue) disagreed, saying that holding all elections in one day was difficult because INEC would not be able to collate results from the large voter population.
According to him, it will be very cumbersome to collate election results because the large number of voters makes it difficult for all elections to hold in one day.
In his contribution, Sen. Ayogu Eze (PDP-Enugu) said that it was necessary to empower the president to appoint INEC secretary in the same manner he appointed its chairman.
Eze supported the call for the introduction of electronic voting by INEC but said that “holding all elections on the same day would be a recipe for confusion.”
The President of the Senate, David Mark, admitted that it was an oversight on the part of the legislature not to have addressed the issue surrounding the appointment of INEC secretary.
“The issue of the appointment of INEC secretary was simply an oversight on our part. There is no debate about that.
“For one reason or the other we just didn’t remember because everybody was worried about the commissioners and the chairman and simply forgot about the secretary of the commission,” Mark said.
The Bill was referred to the Committee on Constitution Review and the Committee on INEC for further action.
