By Emmanuel Okogba
The Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, has recognized delay and failure to pass proposed amendments into law as one of its challenges as it prepared to run the 2019 elections and, by extension, that of 2015.
This was included in a report by the Commission in a report on the challenges faced in the build-up into the conduct of the general election.
According to INEC, drawing from the experience of delay before the 2015 elections where”the new amendments were assented to and signed into law by the President on March 26, 2015, just two days into the election,” the commission began planning for the 2019 elections as early as 2016.
The proposed amendment covered issues such as Diaspora voting, run of primary election by political parties and a proposal to deal with the Kogi conundrum, where a candidate died after the commencement of polls but before the declaration of winner, which wasn’t envisaged in the present legal framework.
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In the 2016 proposed change,”46 items were identified and submitted for consideration by NASS. The proposed alterations ranged from eligibility and disqualification for legislative or executive positions in the Federal and State levels (Sections 65, 106, 131 & 177 of the 1999 Constitution as amended); dates for the conduct of elections into Executive and Legislative positions (Sections76,116,132,&178) into delimitation and size of State Constituencies (Sections 112-115 of the 1999 Constitution as amended).”
Others were tenure of members of the Executive and Legislative branches in the Federal and State levels (Sections 64 & 68, 105 & 109 and 135 & 180 of the 1999 Constitution as amended); the deployment of technologies in the conduct of elections (Sections 49, 52, 53 & 67 of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended); and the death of a governorship candidate before the declaration of the outcome of the election or of run-off elections (Section 112 of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended).”
As experienced in 2015, these proposed amendments were not passed into law before the 2019 General Election. Consequently, the Commission ran the 2019 General Election with the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended).
Vanguard News Nigeria
