President Muhammadu Buhari,
Tuesday declined assent to the controversial bill seeking to re-order the
election sequence recently passed by the National Assembly.
Buhari in his letter to the
Senate and read before the hallowed chamber, stated that ”Pursuant to section
58(4) of the 1999 constitution as amended, I hereby convey to the Senate my
decision on March 3, 2018 to decline presidential assent to the electoral amendment
bill 2018 recently passed by the National Assembly.”
The President said some of his
reasons for withholding assent to the bill was that, ”The amendment to the
sequence of the elections in section 25 of the principal act may infringe upon
the constitutionally guaranteed discretion of the Independent National
Electoral Commission, INEC, to organise, undertake and supervise all elections
provided in section 15(a) of the third schedule to the constitution.”
He also said that the amendment
to section 138 of the principal act to delete two crucial grounds upon which an
election may be challenged by candidate unduly limits the rights of candidates
to a free and fair electoral review process.
He also said that the amendment
to section 152 sub-section 3-5 of the principal act may raise constitutional
issues over the competence of the National Assembly to legislate over local
government elections.
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com