With less than one week remaining for the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to assent or reject the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, the main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party, has said the delay might be a pointer to a tenure elongation plan by the Buhari regime.
The Party’s National Publicity Secretary made the accusation on Tuesday at a Press Conference in Abuja on ‘President Muhammadu Buhari’s continuing withholding of assent to the electoral act amendment bill against the will of Nigerians.’
The Punch had earlier reported that the National Assembly had re-transmitted the revised version of the bill to the President on Monday, January 31, 2022.
On January 18, the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, had told State House Correspondents that the bill was being “cleaned up” by the Legislature, after which it would be transmitted to the President.
He said, “For us in the 9th Assembly, the Electoral Act Amendment Bill is one of the primary legislative agenda that we wanted to deal with in the 9th National Assembly, and to the glory of God Almighty Allah by tomorrow (Wednesday), we will be able to pass that bill for Mr President to consent to it.
“I hope that the cleaning process will not take more than a day. But if it does, then it has to be early next week. But I’m very optimistic that there is not much to clean up because normally when we pass a bill like this, it goes to the legislative drafting unit of the National Assembly.”
Later on Tuesday, however, the Peoples Democratic Party said it is calling the attention of “all Nigerians and the International Community of a dangerous design by the Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress to trigger a serious political crisis that has the capacity to derail our electoral system, truncate our democracy, subvert our corporate existence and turn our nation into another ‘axis of concern’ to the world.”
It said, “Less than a year to the 2023 general elections, President Buhari and the APC are at it again! Expectedly, the current anti-people scheme against the Electoral Act Amendment Bill by the APC administration is heightening apprehensions across the country of furtive plots by APC leaders to orchestrate a constitutional impasse that can railroad our democracy into an emergency tenure elongation, induced election postponement, self-succession or worst still an interim government situation.
“President Buhari continues against the Will of Nigerians to withhold assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill re-transmitted to him since Monday, January 31, 2022 (clear 22 days ago) by the National Assembly. This was after the Legislature had acceded to and incorporated all his requests in the newly transmitted version of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.
“The refusal to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill is nothing short of a premeditated and contrived “political abortion” of the Will of the people as represented by the elected 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives who unanimously passed the Amendment Bill in the first instance.”
Ologunagba said that the President’s current stance validates the Party’s position that the Buhari-led government is “averse to free, fair, transparent and credible elections”.
The PDP cited the President who spoke in the just-concluded AU-EU summit in Brussels, Belgium, calling on the European Union to impose weighty sanctions on those engaged in “unconstitutional change of governments” as well as those influencing the “process and outcomes of elections.”
In that meeting the President said, “We also call for stronger support from the European Union in the condemnation and imposition of weighty sanctions on countries that engage in unconstitutional change of governments as well as manipulation of constitutions in favour of extension of term limits…
“It is therefore imperative for our partnership to also focus on strengthening election processes in Africa and prevent interference to influence the process and outcomes of elections…”
The main opposition, therefore called on Buhari to practice what he preaches.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, in an interview on Channels Television assured Nigerians that the Electoral Bill will be signed in a matter of hours.
He said, “It could be signed today; it could be signed tomorrow. In a matter of hours, not days. Hours could be 24 hours. It could be 48 hours; not days, not weeks.”
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