Electoral amendment bill: 73 Senators have signed to veto Buhari, says lawmaker

Senator George Sekibo has hinted that 73 signatories of serving Senators have been collected for the purpose of vetoing the Electoral Amendment Bill which President Muhamnadu refused to sign after passage by the National Assembly.

Sekibo said lawmakers have begun to move against the president for refusing the Electoral amendment bill.

He said, “Why will Mr. President say he doesn’t want Direct Primary. The country is not a limited liability company. The Senate ought to override him. We have the power to do that. This is what section 58( 4&5) said. The Constitution has given us the power to do so. And we will use that power to do it.

“Some people are saying that all Senators must be present to vote but our constitution gives us three methods of voting; voice vote, through the signatures and the third is electronics. We can use anyone if we had the 2/3 on the signature. We will take it.”

However, the spokesperson for the Senate Sen. Ajibola Basiru has declared the reasons for Buhari’s refusal to sign the Electoral Bill into law as presumptuous and totally fallacious following the communication of the president’s rejection of the bill to the Chamber yesterday.

The Senate spokesperson stated this while appearing on Channels Television programme “Politics today.”

 Bashiru said the National Assembly would approach the issues “Not out of any sense of egotism or having a sense of power tussle with anybody,” but that they will consider it based on “Rational arguments, counter-arguments that maybe be canvased in case whatever reason the president has given.”

He said the argument of the president on cost-burden “presumptuous is totally fallacious.”

According to him, “There is nothing that is given that primary elections must be conducted on the ward bases. it could as well be conducted either on quarterly bases or local government bases.”

On the argument that smaller political parties should be considered, Senator Bashiru said smaller parties may decide to even organize their direct primaries at the state level.

Addressing the argument of the president over security, Senator Bashiru said security should not affect the conduct of elections, questioning that “Because we have security challenge, then we should not even hold 2023 elections?” equating “the argument to the level of absurdity.”

The Senate spokesperson further added that “Choice is part  of Democratic right, but choices must be within the framework of the law that has been set up by the necessary enablement.” He added that the National Assembly majority would decide upon it at the appropriate time.”

He said the Senate would decide “Either we abandon the entire process which I think would rather be unfortunate considering the resources that have gone into the effort or we accede to the argument that Mr. President had canvased or we totally remove anything that has to do with nomination.”

Speaking further on the programme  he said, “As far as I am concerned, the feedback I have as spokesperson of senate based on a survey we have conducted was that one of the best decisions that Nigerian National Assembly has taken is the adoption of the direct primaries and this have an empirical record.”

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum who is also the Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has said the governors cared less of the mode of the primary, but that fair chance should be given to all.

According to him, “The bill doesn’t matter to any Governor whether you have Direct mode or an indirect mode,” saying the President “has not objected to Direct Primary neither has he endorsed indirect primary. He has only said be fair to all. Let all options apply.”