By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has stressed that it is a globally established fact that a flawed electoral system is a huge threat to any democracy, and can constitute an invitation to anarchy.
Dogara stated this at National Assembly yesterday, while declaring open, a public hearing on some bills seeking to amend the Electoral Act, organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Electoral and Political Parties Matters.
According to him, “experience has shown that good electoral system governed by an efficient and effective legal framework is an inescapable prerequisite for the conduct of free, fair and credible election, enthronement of good governance which will ensure peace and stability in the polity.”
On the need to improve upon the nation’s electoral system, the Speaker said: “While we continue to acknowledge the reasonable improvements recorded during the 2015 general elections in Nigeria where the ruling political party lost the elections and accepted the outcome of the process, we cannot pretend that the election was without flaws some of which bordered on lacunae in the legal framework.
“The case in Kogi state governorship election in which a candidate died after the ballot, but before the declaration of results present a classical example of such limitations in the Electoral Act, among others, that require reform in the law.
“The issue of legal framework for electronic accreditation (Card Reader);
Electronic Voting and announcement of Election Results; the place of INEC Guidelines/ Regulations vis-a-vis the Procedure for elections contained in the Electoral Act itself, Diaspora Voting, the role of Political Parties in the nomination process, etc are some of the matters that should be settled in time before the 2019 General Elections.”
Earlier, in her address, the chairman of the Committee on Electoral and Political Parties Matters, Hon. Aisha Dukku, explained that the hearing was in furtherance of the House’s legislative agenda, “as it relates to its commitment to carrying out further electoral reforms.”
“We all witnesses to the 2015 general elections organised by INEC were remarkable and, indeed, they were substantively much better than previous elections. They presented a turning point away from the history of badly conducted elections towards the satisfaction of the aspirations of Nigerians for free, fair, credible and peaceful elections,” she said.
She, however, added that there was still a lot of work to be done, “to take Nigeria to point of elections that are devoid of the usual challenges.”
