Lawmakers amend Electoral Act
The Senate, on Thursday, March 30, amended Nigeria’s Electoral Act.
The upper legislative chamber passed the bill to push for electoral reform and guarantee free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria.
Read the highlights of the Bill below:
1.
There shall now be full biometric accreditation of voters with Smart
Card Readers and/or other technological devices, as INEC may introduce
for elections from time to time.
2.
Presiding Officers must now instantly transmit accreditation data and
results from Polling Units to various collation centers. Presiding
officer who contravene this shall be imprisoned for at least 5 years (no
option of fine).
3. All Presiding
Officer must now first record accreditation data and polling results on
INEC’s prescribed forms before transmitting them. The data/result
recorded must be the same with what they transmitted.
4. INEC now has unfettered powers to conduct elections by electronic voting.
5. Besides manual registers, INEC is now mandated to keep Electronic registers of voters.
6.
INEC is now mandated to publish voters’ registers on its official
website(s) for public scrutiny at least 30 days before a general
election and any INEC staff who is responsible for this but fails to act
as prescribed shall be liable on conviction to 6 months’ imprisonment.
7.
INEC is now mandated to keep a National Electronic Register of Election
Results as a distinct database or repository of polling unit by polling
unit results for all elections conducted by INEC.
8.
Collation of election result is now mainly electronic, as transmitted
unit results will help to determine final results on real time basis.
9.
INEC is now mandated to record details of electoral materials –
quantities, serial numbers used to conduct elections (for proper
tracking).
10. A political party whose
candidate dies after commencement of an election and before the
declaration of the result of that election now has a 14-day window to
conduct a fresh primary in order for INEC to conduct a fresh election
within 21 days of the death of the party’s candidate;
11.
Political parties’ Polling Agents are now entitled to inspect originals
of electoral materials before commencement of election and any
Presiding Officer who violates this provision of the law shall be
imprisoned for at least1 year.
12. No
political party can impose qualification/disqualification criteria,
measures or conditions on any Nigerian for the purpose of nomination for
elective offices, except as provided in the 1999 Constitution.
13.
The election of a winner of an election can no longer be challenged on
grounds of qualification, if the he (winner) satisfied the applicable
requirements of sections 65, 106, 131 or 177 of the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and he is not, as may be
applicable, in breach of sections 66, 107, 137 or 182 of the
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. [For example, a
person’s election cannot be challenged on the ground that he did not pay
tax, as this is not a qualifying condition under the Constitution.]
14.
All members of political parties are now eligible to determine the
ad-hoc delegates to elect candidates of parties in indirect primaries.
The capacity of party executives to unduly influence or rig party
primaries has been reasonably curtailed, if not totally removed.
15.
Parties can no longer impose arbitrary nomination fees on political
aspirants. The Bill passed prescribes limits for each elective office as
follows:
(a) One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira (N150,000) for a Ward Councillorship aspirant in the FCT;
(b) Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira (N250,000) for an Area Council Chairmanship aspirant in the FCT;
(c) Five Hundred Thousand Naira (N500,000) for a House of Assembly aspirant;
(d) One Million Naira (N1,000,000) for a House of Representatives aspirant;
(e) Two Million Naira (N2,000,000) for a Senatorial aspirant;
(f) Five Million naira (N5,000,000) for a Governorship aspirant; and
(g) Ten Million Naira (N10,000,000) for a Presidential aspirant.
16.
Relying on the powers of the National Assembly in Paragraph 11 of Part
II (Concurrent Legislative List) of the Second Schedule (Legislative
Powers) to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as
amended), the Senate also passed measures reforming procedures
regulating Local Government Elections. State Independent Electoral
Commissions can no longer conduct elections that do not meet minimum
standards of credibility.
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