President Muhammadu Buhari has withheld assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 passed by the National Assembly (NASS) stalling hopes of drastic reforms expected to further strengthen the country’s electoral system. The President took issue with the new legislation’s bid to amend Section 87 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as Amended) by stipulating direct primaries as the sole option for political parties to nominate their candidates, as against the extant provision allowing a choice among direct, indirect and consensus primaries. It was on that score he turned down the bill with some 158 sections that include a provision for electronic transmission of results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and which empowers the electoral body to overturn results declared by its agents under duress, among other landmark provisions addressing some challenges that hobbled the Nigerian electoral process over the years.

In rejecting the amendment bill, Mr. President said it had “serious adverse legal, financial, economic and security consequences which cannot be accommodated at the moment, considering our nation’s peculiarities. It also has implications on the rights of citizens to participate in the government as constitutionally ensured.” He outlined seven major reasons why, upon reviewing the bill as passed by NASS, he could not give his assent. One of these has to do with financials, as he argued that the conduct of direct primaries across the 8,809 wards nationwide would result in “a significant spike in the cost of conducting primary elections by parties as well as an increase in the cost of monitoring such elections by INEC who has to deploy monitors across these wards each time a party is to conduct direct primaries.” This factor added to already humongous costs of conducting election in the country would impose an unbearable financial burden on political parties, INEC and the entire economy, he said. He also argued that heightened monetisation of elections would fuel financial crimes as well as stifle smaller parties without the resources to mobilise their members for direct primaries, thereby undermining the sustenance of multi-party democracy in Nigeria. The President added the dimension of security, saying the conduct of direct primaries across the 8,809 wards would entail security challenges that would overstretch the agencies saddled with preserving order, and in the event of gaps as might be inevitable, raise credibility issues about electoral outcomes.

Other arguments by President Buhari include that the amendment basically violated the essence of democracy, namely the freedom of political parties to choose between options. He threw in the judicial angle, saying there could be a surge in litigations arising from, but not limited to the fact that the new provision could not be retroactive whereas all parties had already registered their constitutions making allowance for multiple options for primaries with INEC. With the imminence of 2023 general election, the rash of litigations, he believed, could truncate the country’s electoral process. Another challenge, according to him, is that institutionalising direct primaries would aggravate the over-monetisation of the electoral process “as there will be much more people a contestant needs to reach out to, thereby further fuelling corruption and abuse of office by incumbent contestants who may resort to public resources to satisfy the increased demands and logistics of winning party primaries.” Lastly, according to him, is that direct primaries are susceptible to worse manipulations than the indirect and consensus primary options the new amendment seeks to eliminate.

Much as the President was painstaking with reasons he adduced for turning down the new amendment bill, however, he did not address the challenge the National Assembly sought to tackle by stipulating direct primaries in the legislation. The contentious clause aimed at upending the practice over the years whereby manipulation of the delegate system by power centres in respective party, like state governors, often resulted in imposition of anointed candidates based on narrow preferences of those power centres rather than on general electoral appeal or merit of candidates concerned. The disputed clause thus prescribed that political parties should hold direct primaries (i.e. involving all party members) for aspirants to all elective positions, and that such primaries should be monitored by INEC. It added that the procedure for candidate nomination by the parties through direct primaries “shall ensure that all aspirants are given equal opportunities of being voted for by members of the party, and given the opportunity to have agents for the purpose of monitoring the primaries.”

Considering where Nigeria is coming from, it is shocking that a President who has espoused the desire to leave a legacy of institutionalising credible elections could stand against efforts to stamp in internal party democracy and foster transparency in place of cultic tendencies that had prevailed in most parties. Even though direct primaries have always been one of the options provided for by extant legal framework, this option has never been a favorite of party lords and have only worked where there is sufficient counter-muscle by its proponents in respective party. For that reason, turning down the electoral amendment bill seeking to mandate the option was a missed opportunity to do right for the system.

The withholding of presidential assent to the 2021 amendment bill was as well a missed opportunity to put in place a reformed legal framework for the 2023 election cycle that could’ve been test-run with the off-cycle governorship elections in Osun and Ekiti states by mid-2022. Successful conduct of any election largely depends on the certainty and clarity of the governing legal framework, which is why the African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Good Governance and the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance prescribe that any amendment to the electoral legal framework be concluded not later than six months to the election date. With the 2023 poll holding in February of that year, the latest the electoral law to govern it must be in place is mid-2022; but that law ideally should have been test run with the off-season elections in Osun and Ekiti, which is the purpose finalising the 2021 amendment bill as originally projected would have served. Unfortunately, that opportunity was missed.

Now that Mr. President has withheld assent, it challenges the institutional integrity of the National Assembly whose members had warned of an override. We shall see how independent and resolute the lawmakers are or whether the presidency will browbeat them.

If they yield, however, we must note that there are other items that are not contentious. So, it is imperative to get the legislative process swiftly back on track and carried through. NASS should urgently rework the contentious provisions and return the bill for assent at the earliest possible date – that is, if it cannot live up to its institutional billing of overriding the presidential veto in line with Section 58(5) of the 1999 Constitution (as Amended).