By writing to both chambers of the
National Assembly to express his reservations about the Electoral Act 2010
Amendment Bill, President Muhammadu Buhari has withheld his assent and
cast doubt on the rationality of the lawmakers to review or amend the contentious
provisions of the Act. What this means, in legislative parlance, is that the
president has vetoed the bill. Consequently, the National Assembly is now
in a position to override the veto by two-thirds of its members at
separate sittings.
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| *President Buhari and Senate President Saraki |
There is no doubt that the nation is about to witness
another executive-legislature face-off in constitution reviews, amendments of
Acts of Parliament and lawmaking process where the executive arm of government
feels its interest is threatened by the spirit and the letter of the proposed
laws or amendments. To be sure, the National Assembly has performed its
constitutional function in the circumstance to the dissatisfaction of the
incumbent head of the executive arm.
Historically, if the National Assembly, under Bukola
Saraki’s chairmanship, pursues the override option and goes ahead to
successfully override Buhari’s veto it would be the second time that the
National Assembly would override presidential veto in the nation’s
In terms of aggregative national interest, the
reservations expressed by Obasanjo were in apple-pie order. It was
difficult to understand how the objections he raised could have been in
furtherance of his personal or pecuniary interest, although his objections were
mainly on the proposed funding components of the NDDC.
While the National Assembly proposed that 15 percent of
Federal Government’s monthly statutory allocations be contributed to the
funding of the Commission, Obasanjo wanted it reduced to 10 percent. He also
wanted the 3 percent annual budget of all oil and gas companies operating in
the Niger Delta region proposed by the National Assembly as the companies’
funding contribution to the Commission reduced to 1.5 percent.
Whereas, Obasanjo wanted member states of the NDDC to
contribute 10 percent of their derivation funds to funding the Commission, the
National Assembly dropped that proposal. When the totality of these
proposals was subjected to critical scrutiny for underlying interests, neither
Obasanjo nor the National Assembly could be essentially indicted.
But this cannot be said of the current face-off, which
centres significantly on the reordering of the sequence of elections as
reflected in section 25 of the Electoral Act as amended. This is
because this provision affects whether positively or negatively the political
interests of the president and the federal
legislators. Understandably, the INEC, being an agency of the
executive arm, even though it is claiming to be independent, has acted in
cahoots with the Presidency to decide the sequence of elections in 2019.
The Commission, in a bid to foist a fait accompli on the
nation and perhaps to blackmail the National Assembly, decided to hurriedly fix
and release the dates and sequence of elections for the next 35 years or
thereabouts, specifically from 2019 to 2055. This is sui generis and
curious administrative projection in the annals of public administration in Nigeria
With my little knowledge of elementary government and
administrative law, there are limitations to the exercise of delegated powers
which are the kinds that the INEC, as a so-called independent agency of the
executive arm of government, exercises in conduct of elections within the
strictest construction and understanding of the provisions of the extant
Electoral Act passed by the National Assembly.
No one is in doubt as to the fact that there is power
separation among the three arms of government. And, in order to
curtail the excesses of one arm in the discharge of its function, there is
in-built principle of checks and balances. What the National
Assembly has done with respect to the amendment of the Electoral Act is to
check the excesses and near monstrosity of the INEC in the discharge of its
delegated administrative power with respect to conduct of elections.
The National Assembly has not tinkered with the general
time-table that the INEC has drawn up. What it has simply done by
its amendment is to reorder the sequence of election for the observance and
necessary administrative action by the Commission, still within the time
table. In the national interest, nothing could be said to be wrong
on the face of the initial ordering by the INEC and the subsequent reordering
by the National Assembly.
But in the individual interests of the political actors,
a whole lot is perceivably wrong. For Buhari to reject the
well-considered proposal of the National Assembly that shifted the presidential
election to the last in the poll sequence is nothing but resorting to bully
tactics. In any case, that is unfortunately indicative of a synergy
between the Presidency and the INEC to possibly force the INEC’s original poll
sequence on the nation.
The federal legislators, apparently, do not want the
bandwagon effects of the outcome of the presidential election of one man to
affect the subsequent election of many others; and, therefore, the polls should
end with the presidential election.
Why does Buhari want the Presidential and National
Assembly election to start first? Perhaps two reasons could be
added. First, he probably does not want to spend his personal or federal
government’s money on election mobilization. He feels comfortable and assured
that National Assembly candidates contesting on the APC platform would be the
ones to spend their money to mobilise for votes for the party which he would
then benefit from since he believes he is a beloved patron saint.
Second, Buhari is perhaps afraid that if the presidential
election is a stand-alone process that comes up last, there is no guarantee
that the elected members of the APC would be committed to his electoral battle.
He would be forced to spend billions for the poll, which ordinarily he would
want to because of his holier-than-thou disposition.
And this is the intersection where the federal lawmakers
must show audacity to override Buhari’s veto. They must push through
the imperativeness of the reordered election sequence in the overall national
interest. The presidential election should be held last. Who says
the sequence of elections must follow the pattern of 2015 or em2011 general
elections? The sequence is not cast in stone.
National consciousness and consensus should be built
around the presidential election coming last in the sequence. Apart
from the presidential election, which has the entire nation as the
constituency of the candidates, every other election is local to the extent
that it is delimited or delineated by state boundaries for governorship
election; state constituencies for House of Assembly elections; federal
constituencies for House of Representatives elections; and senatorial zones
for elections to the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
The time for political pragmatism that does not confer
undue electoral advantages on anyone, especially a sitting president, is now.
*Sufuyan Ojeifo is the Editor-in-chief
of The
Congresswatch magazine.
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