The delay in the passage of the Electoral Act, following the refusal of President Muhammud Buhari, to assent to the amendment by the National Assembly, has been described as a recipe for crisis ahead the 2023 general elections.
Dumnamene Dekor, member representing Khana/Gokana, Federal Constituency, Rivers State, in the House of Representatives raised the alarm in an interview with Aljazirah in his office in Abuja.
He noted that, “We have about 371 days to an election, when the election is supposed to be proclaimed, up till this moment, technically about 11 days from now and Mr. President is set to give his assent, we sincerely hope he does, because by 18th of February, it will be such a worrisome situation”
According to the lawmaker, “most of the things we talked about that people are fraudulently elected, the kind of crisis seen in our electoral process, the militarization of elections, particularly in Rivers, where I come from, I believe some of those things will come to an end”, he observed.
He explained that, “With a better electoral process, it will be easy, if I am not popular and I have used whatever means to come here with the provisions of the Act, if elections result are transmitted from the polling units, it will remove a lot of fraud from the system. It will also make our elections cheaper in the long run in terms of manpower, because you have to recruit so many men, the risk corp members are going through and so many others in the process will be reduced.
“All these people running to the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, where the electoral materials are kept for safety, monitoring all the process because of the issue of trust doesn’t exist within the system, will be taken away if the bill is assented to; to that extent, Mr. President can do Nigeria and Nigerians a lot of good by giving his assent”
Dekor further noted that, “ the reason is simple if I think I am strong and I have my people , who are willing that I should represent them , there might be a woman who is out there selling pepper , but also has the minimum qualification to run for election into the National Assembly, she can put herself forward for election knowing that there is going to be one man, one vote, and that the vote of the people will count , so she is not going to be shortchanged. That way she will go and run election against me and because she is popular and acceptable by the people she will be elected. The issue of thuggery, too much money and all that will be reduced to a very minimal level and of course, in tune with modern trend all over the world and it will work for us”, he admonished.
He chided the lawmakers who voted against the earlier amendment sent to President Muhammad Buhari for his assent, hinging their argument on non-availability of network, insisting that “All this story of we don’t have network is neither here nor there, but we can do ‘TraderMoni’ all over the place, we are still doing electronic banking, why will that of electronic transmission of results be different?”
The lawmaker who is the Chairman, House Committee on Host Communities, appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari, and the All Progressives Congress, APC, to do Nigerians a favour by ushering in a better Electoral Act that will define the process of electing people into various offices.
“President Buhari, should assent to the Bill as a legacy for Nigeria. He knows he is going to leave office; it is something that he will be remembered for”, he said.
