Electoral bill: It’s undemocratic to insist on direct primaries, Buhari tells National Assembly

President Muhammadu Buhari says it is undemocratic for the national assembly to insist on direct primaries.

 

The national assembly had transmitted the electoral act amendment bill to Buhari for his assent in November.

 

The bill has compulsory direct primaries for political parties and electronic transmission of election results as part of the amendments proposed by the national assembly.

 

But Buhari had rejected the bill on the grounds that the amendment may open up the electoral system to litigations, adding that adopting direct primary “violates the spirit of democracy”.

 

Speaking on Wednesday during an interview on Channels Television, the president said Nigerians should be given options and allowed to decide what they want.

 

“No. I am not going to support it. Personally, I don’t support direct primaries because I want people to be given a choice. You can’t give them one option and think you are giving them democracy. Let’s have the three options — direct, indirect, and consensus,” Buhari said.

 

Asked if he would still sign the electoral bill if the national assembly removes the clause he doesn’t agree with, he replied: “I don’t think I told them what I don’t like. What I said was there should be options. We must not insist that it has to be direct. Yes, I will sign the bill. You can’t dictate to people and say you are doing democracy.”

 

On if he thought he would have had a fighting chance if the All Progressives Congress (APC) had employed the use of indirect primary as a means of selecting its candidate in the build-up to the 2019 elections, Buhari said he won the election as a result of the merging of different parties to form the APC.

 

“I would expect you to ask me ‘how did we overthrow the PDP?’ You remember ACN, APGA, ANPP, CPC and another party came together. PDP was so overconfident they thought they would rule till the end of time, but the opposition came together and overthrew them.

 

“No, we didn’t win as a result of direct primary but the opposition coming together and fighting the PDP.

 

“Whichever way you look at it, the fact that we came together is what gave us the success we had. That was the mistake they made; that was why they lost.”