Nigeria Content Online

Two
members-sponsored bills have shown up at the National Assembly, again
seeking to allow political appointees serve as delegates at the
conventions of political parties, weeks after the Senate dumped a
similar bill and the House promised to do same.

The bill, sponsored by the 44 members of the
committee on Constitution amendment, was read the first time at the
Senate, on Tuesday, while the House passed its version, released for
the first time through a second reading.

The Senate’s bill is a milder version of an earlier
amendment bill, which was proposed by the Presidency but thrown out by
the Senators, who described the earlier amendment as “toxic” to the
Electoral Act 2010.

The new bill proposes that the Section 87(8) of the
2010 Electoral Act, which prohibits political appointees at all
government levels from participating as voting delegates at party
congresses, be amended to accommodate political appointees who are
elected officials of the party.

“No political appointee at any level shall be a
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 elected officer of a
political party,” the new bill proposes.

Even though the new bill negates the rule of the
Senate that any bill which was thrown away from the floor of the Senate
cannot be re-introduced until after six months from the day the bill
was rejected, the Senate appears keen on passing it.

Ayogu Eze, the Senate spokesperson, argued that the
new bill is not on the same subject matter as the executive bill, which
the lawmakers rejected a few weeks ago.

Automatic delegates

The insistence of the lawmakers to go ahead with the
bill, despite their rules, may be linked to another change the bill
will bring to the Act. The bill seeks to set the quality and membership
of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of all political parties in
the Act by introducing subsection 12 to section 87.

According to the bill’s proposal, the membership of
every parties NEC shall include presiding officers of the National
Assembly, who are members of the political party, and chairmen and vice
chairmen of standing committees, who are members of the party in both
the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are 55 standing
committees in the Senate and 85 in the House of Representatives. Going
by the proposal of the bill, the National Executive Committee of the
People’s Democratic Party, the largest party in National Assembly,
would have about 240 lawmakers as members.

Conventionally, members of the National Executive Committee are automatic voting delegates at party primaries.

“In our own view, any law that we will make to ensure
our party rule more democratically, to ensure that there is good
governance, to ensure that you pull in more voices to increase the
breath of consultation within the political parties themselves, that
law is a desirable law, because at the end of the day, the people you
are sending there are the representative of the people,” Mr. Ayogu Eze
said, justifying the amendments.

“In any case, most of the other political parties,
except a few in the country, already have member of the National
Assembly as member of their NEC. What we are doing is not new or
strange in that law,” he added.

The House’s version of the bill is sponsored by Cyril
Maduabum and Igo Aguma. The bill, according to its sponsors, targets
“inconsistencies” in the already amended Electoral Act. One of them is
the mention of the Independent Candidate in the document, even when it
was rejected during constitution amendments.

The bill is to also reconcile provisions made about
dates in the Act, as well as the constitution. But the final part of
the bill seeks to make all members of the National Assembly automatic
members of the National Executive Committee of their parties.

The committee, to be the highest making body of the
parties, is expected to provide for an easier decision on the choice of
the bulk of party delegates.

Mr. Maduabum has denied that the bill has ill
intentions. He said yesterday that the bill is not a “reincarnation” of
the one rejected by the Senate and is not out to destroy democracy. The
House promptly read the bill the second time on Tuesday without debates.