By Haruna Salami
The Senate Yuesday passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill earlier rejected by President Muhammadu Buhari thrice.
The new law limits election expenses of presidential candidate to N5 billion, governor N1 billion senate N250 million and House of Representatives N100 million.
It will be recalled that President Buhari had rejected the Bill three times, due to some observed lacunas in some of the sections of the amendments Bill and advised that the observations be addressed.
In the Bill passed yesterday by the Senate, Clause 14 was introduced to amend Section 49 (4) of the Principal Act that deals with failure of a card reader.
The report of the Senate Committee on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chaired by Senator Suleiman Nazif said, “where a smart card reader deployed for accreditation of voters fails to function in any polling unit and a fresh card reader is not deployed 3 hours before the close of the election in that unit, then the election shall not hold but be rescheduled and conducted within 24 hours thereafter, provided that where the total possible votes from all the affected card readers in the unit or units does not affect the overall result in the constituency or election concerned, the commission shall notwithstanding the fact that a fresh card reader is not deployed as stipulated, announce the final results and declare a winner.”
Clause 24 was also introduced to amend section 87 (13) of the Principal Act that deals with the issue of deadline for primary election.
“The dates of the primaries shall not be earlier than 150 days and not later than 90 days before the date of the election to the elective offices.
“The same section also stipulates a specific period within which political party primaries are required to be held since the unintended consequences of leaving lNEC with only 9 days to collate and compile lists of candidates and political parties for the various elections. This is because the earlier Electoral Act Amendment Bill did not properly amend sections 31, 33 and 85 of the principal Act that stipulate times for submission of lists of candidates, publication of lists of candidates, notice of conventions and congresses for nominating candidates for elections,” the adopted report said.
Clause 32 was introduced to amend section 140 (4) of the principal Act that deals with omission of name of a candidate or logo of a political party.
It states that “if at the point of display or distribution of ballot papers by the commission, a candidate or his agent discovers that his name, the name or logo of his party is omitted, a candidate or his agent shall notify the commission and the commission shall postpone the election to rectify the omission; and appoint another date to conduct the election, not later than 90 days.
‘Where the election is postponed due to omission of a political party’s name or logo, the commission’s officer responsible for such printing of party names or logo commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for 2 years or a fine of N2,000,000.00 or both.”
The main objectives of the amendment of the Bill, according to the lawmakers include, “to provide for the use of card readers and any other similar technological devices in conducting elections; to provide a time line for the submission of list of candidates as rightly captured in section 31 (6) and 85 (l) of the Bill; to identify criteria for substitution of candidates, limit of campaign expenses; and to address noticed problems related to the omission of names of candidates or logo of political parties.”
Senator Nazif, however said that all the issues raised by President Buhari have been addressed in the adopted report, as he said, “Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, at this juncture it is worthy to state very clearly that all the issues raised by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, while declining his assent to this Bill have been captured and addressed.”
After passing the Bill into law, the Senate commended Nazif and his committee and assured that it will receive President Muhammadu Buhari’s assent this time.
In his contribution shortly after the presentation of the Committee Chairman, Senator Emmanuel Bwacha said that he hope the President will not sent the Bill back “to us again, everything that need to be done has been done. It involved both PDP and APC, anything that will not made the Bill to be assented to will be sending a bad signal.
The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, shortly after the enactment of the Amendment Bill congratulated the committee, adding, “this will go a along way to improving our election and I am sure Mr President will assent this Bill.”
Meanwhile, the Senate, in the passage of the Bill, has limited the expenses for Presidential election to N5 billion, gubernatorial candidate N1 billion.
While the Senatorial candidate is limited to N250 million, that of the House of Representatives is N100 million, State House of Assembly Candidate, N30 million, Chairmanship of Area Council, N30 million, while the Councilorship candidate must not go beyond N5,000,000.000.
According to the amendment, no individual or other entity shall donate to a candidate more that N10 million, just as section 91(10) stipulates that “a candidate who knowingly acts in contravention of this section, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of 1% of the amount permitted as the limit of campaign expenditure under this Act or Imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or both.”