PRESIDENTIAL DITHERING ON ELECTORAL BILL

There is no rational basis for Buhari’s hesitation to sign the electoral bill, writes Bolaji Adebiyi

Speculations were rife yesterday that President Muhammadu Buhari would assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2022. The media quoted presidency sources just like THISDAY was assured on Sunday that the president would sign on Monday. That did not happen. If it happens today, the president would have done a noble and honourable thing as he would have left a strong legacy of queuing behind the forces that fought for cleaner electoral processes for the country.

Though coming a little bit late, it would still be better late than never. He would now be seen to have bowed to public pressure. Something uncommon with his stubborn character. Only last Tuesday in Abuja, a coalition of civil society organisations protested his dithering to sign the bill. Coming before the president the sixth time, having declined assent on five previous occasions, the CSOs thought the president needed to act with urgency particularly because further delays would affect the Independent National Electoral Commission’s timetable for the 2023 general elections.

The president had characteristically ignored them and their concerns. The only seeming response was that of Femi Adesina, a presidential media aide, who said his boss might sign within the time frame provided by the 1999 Constitution as altered. That would lapse on Monday, the proposed legislation having been transmitted to the president on 31 January 2022.

The presidential hesitation to assent confirms social policy critics’ position that the reason given by the president for his fifth veto of the bill was a smokescreen and that the real purpose was to block the enormous possibilities for electoral fidelity that the proposed legislation promised.

Despite the many fine points of the amendment bill, including the introduction of electronic technology into the electoral process, which many analysts said would minimise manipulations, Buhari refused assent on the ground that a single clause, 87, denied political parties of choices, offended individual rights and would be expensive to implement. Although there were plausible arguments against these complaints, many Nigerians prevailed on the National Assembly to rework the bill in accordance with the wish of the president, not because he was right but in order to save the overall advantages of the proposed legislation.

Now, 27 days after the recommitted bill was transmitted, the president had neither signed nor returned it for further legislative consideration. What is more, there had been no official communication on the reason for this dithering safe for the speculation that the president might be uncomfortable with clause 84 of the bill, which bars political appointees from vying for elective office or being delegates to party primaries. This is unfortunate and it shows more than ever before the president’s habitual lousy and lackadaisical approach to public policy.

Assuming that was the president’s objection, why would he not raise it for public debate and timely rework by the legislature given that time was running out for a change in the electoral law that would guide the 2023 general elections? In any case, what does the clause say?

“No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election,” it says. The president, it was said, believed that this would circumscribe the constitutional right of political appointees and make them ineligible for elective offices.

Obviously, the president’s thinking appears to have been influenced by persons around him who, though they hold political appointments, are interested in contesting elective offices shortly. This kind of enlightened self-interest and undue influence peddling is precisely the mischief that the proposed provision intends to cure. And if the president had adverted his mind to this, he would have found that his objection had no ground to stand on either on point of the constitution or legal precedent.

On point of principle, the clause complained of is not new. It is similar to the existing section 87 (8) of Electoral Act 2010, which states: “A political appointee at any level shall not be an automatic voting delegate at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of nomination of candidates for any election, except where such a political appointee is also an officer of a political party.”

Looking at the mischief that this provision intends to cure, the president is wrong on at least three counts. Individual rights are not absolute as the constitution prescribes that they could be abridged by a reasonably justifiable law of the legislature; law-making is the constitutional function of the legislature; and rejecting the bill a sixth time would amount to excessive use of executive power of veto, which would defeat the concept of balance of power that is the basis of the prevailing presidential system of government.

Although some political analysts have complained that the clause amounts to interfering in the internal processes of political parties, this critique fails to appreciate the practical reality that forced the legislature to opt for this concept. The entire section 87, which prescribes the processes for the selection of candidates for elective offices was introduced in 2010 when it became obvious that the executive at all levels had hijacked the internal processes of the parties to the exclusion of other stakeholders.

Taking advantage of the provision of their parties’ constitutions, which allowed the executive’s (the president and the governors) political appointees to be automatic delegates to the special congresses and national conventions for the purpose of electing candidates for political offices, that arm of government became so overbearing that it completely overwhelmed all the other stakeholders. In some cases, governors bloated delegates list with over a thousand appointees appointed on the eve of congresses.

Confronted by these executive excesses, the legislature decided to use its law-making function as a political tool to balance the equation by introducing section 87 that streamlined the indirect primaries (delegates) mode of selection of candidates, which says only elected persons could be delegates to the congresses and national conventions of parties. This was also the reasoning behind the contentious clause 84 that has now been redrafted.

Anyone who criticises the rationale behind this legislative tool only needs to review the behaviour of the governors of the two main political parties, the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, in the last few months, particularly with reference to the processes for their national conventions and election of their national leadership. Only this week, the president and governors of the APC, without regard for the other stakeholders, including the legislative caucus and the party’s constitutional structures, determined the dates and mode of selection of its national working committee members. How could that be right?

Adebiyi, the managing editor of THISDAY Newspapers, writes from bolaji.adebiyi@thisdaylive.com