Senate rethinking bill on election sequence
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the sequence that is proposed here is such that not only has it taken us backwards it shows that we look confused akpabio said1 some hours after the house of representatives discarded the bill to reorder the sequence of the 2019 general elections the senate is re-considering the contentious provisions which the president snubbed1 both the senate and the house of representatives had in the 2010 electoral act amendment bill 2018 passed in february proposed a new sequence of elections in 20191 the amendment placed the national assembly election first followed by state houses of assembly governorship elections and presidential election last1 but president muhammadu buhari vetoed the bill in march1 the president said the inserted section in the electoral act violated the provisions of section 72 of the 1999 constitution which empowered inec to fix dates of elections and see to its conduct in all ramifications1 in his lead debate on wednesday nazif disclosed that the new reordered sequence of elections would start with governorshipstate houses of assembly elections followed by the national assembly election and presidential election last1 contributing sen. kabiru marafa apc zamfara in said the bill will further divide the senate1 it is unnecessary and we should not go to that. i dont want us to finish the way we started he said1 similarly senate minority leader sen. godswill akpabio said when we initially did the first one that the president sent to us i believe strongly that the national assembly has the powers to fix sequence of election in the law as opposed to dates all the judgments so far have talked about dates1 inec has the rights to fix dates for election but in terms of sequence of election i believe we can legislate on it1 but my disagreement with the bill is that we cannot probate and reprobate as a senate we are distinguished people and we must not speak with both sides of our mouth1 the decision of the senate on wednesday followed the debate on the bill which sought to further improve the electoral process as presented by the chairman senate committee on independent national electoral commission inec sen. suleiman nazif at plenary1 also the chief whip of the senate sen. olushola adeyeye kicked against the bill by describing it as unconstitutional1 as vice chairman of senate committee on inec i state categorically that i totally oppose this bill1 there cannot be sequence of elections unless there are dates. and if inec is given the prerogative to choose and inec chooses to put one day before the other let us leave things as they are1 inec in the past chose their date and inec in the 8th national assembly must be given the respect again to choose their date. anything else in my opinion is legislative rascality adeyeye said1 in his remarks the deputy president of the senate mr ike ekweremadu who presided said it was important for all senators to be on the same page in matters such as this1 we passed the electoral act and then we sent it to the president the president returned that bill with a number of observations1 one of the observations he made was in respect of order of election he also made observation with regards to local government elections which the national assembly was given power under that bill to make laws1 the president has made observations in respect of some aspects of that bill he did not say that the bill we passed was entirely useless1 to save those noble provisions in the electoral act it is important that we remove all those areas that the president had objected to and pass the remaining items as a separate bill and send it back to him1 then we can now deal with the issues where he has issues as a separate bill altogether then we either defeat it or have it succeed1 if it succeeds we send it to the president he decides what to do if he brings it back we also decide what to do1 we need to clean up that bill so that we will be able to save all those provisions that were already made in the elaborate bill ekweremadu said. nan1