For those that felt that all is over on the controversial Bill seeking to reorder the sequence of Nigeria’s general elections, the latest is that House of Representatives, has tactically introduced another bill on the fragile matter.
Before now, there had been an apparent believe that if presidential elections comes first, tendency is that the winning party may rely on bandwagon effect to sweep remaining elections as no state will like to unnecessarily become an avoidable opposition to the running party after all.
So, the do away with the bandwagon ripple effects in Nigeria’s elections, the abruptly ended discussion on the matter is back at the lower chamber and may reverberate at the Senate sooner than later.
It would be recalled that the Senator Ovie Omo-Agege suspension was linked to his unacceptable remarks that the Bill is simply targeted to frustrate president Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election bid in 2019 which the Senate viewed as embarrassing in the first instance.
There were rife speculations that to further make sure the Bill did not see the light of the day on the day of debate at Senate, moves were perfected to by yet to be identified hoodlums to forcefully snatch away the Mace.
However, alternate Mace surfaced and plenary continued but the controversial Bill was not tabled.
The Sequence reordering Bill sponsored by Kingsley Chinda, a People’s Democratic Party (PDP) lawmaker from Rivers State, was read for the first time during plenary in Thursday.
Trouble on the controversy had began in March this year, when President Buhari declined assent to the National Assembly’s amendment of the Electoral Act, 2010, because of the inclusion of a clause which provides for sequence of elections.
In that amendment, federal lawmakers put the National Assembly election before the presidential poll.
However, in his letter to the National Assembly, President Buhari averred that the Legislature’s action violated the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and noted that only the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can set the order of elections in the country.
Basking on the euphoria of making that particular law see the light of the day, the House of Representatives said there was no going back on altering the sequence of Nigeria’s elections hence the Green Chamber decided to excise the clause to treat same as a separate bill.
Besides, the National Assembly got a strong boost form a recent court judgement upholding the power of the Legislature to legislate on sequence of elections in the country.
