The Akwa Ibom Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mike Igini has drawn the attention of the National Assembly to what he sees as obnoxious provision and called on them to expunge Section 134(2) from the Electoral Act, 2022.
The section states ‘An Act or omission which may be contrary to an instruction or directive of the Commission or of an officer appointed for the purpose of the election but which is not contrary to the provisions of this Act shall not of itself be a ground for questioning the election.’’
The Act became a law from February 25, 2022 as soon as President Muhammadu Buhari signed it.
Igini was speaking this at Bezaleel Hall, AKHA Road, off Udo Udoma Avenue, Uyo during a one-day seminar on understanding the Electoral Act, 2022 mounted by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for members of Nigeria Union Journalists, Akwa Ibom Council on Thursday.
He argued that the section renders the INEC which should be a final arbiter in election matters useless in that the aggrieved has enough room to petition and contest the results announced by INEC in any law court in the land.
The electoral umpire noted that at times courts could upturn the results validly conducted by INEC in favour of the petitioner on technical grounds.
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‘The court of law should not answer ot handle election matters. The moment a contestant is allowed to go to court, it is dangerous to our democracy. Owing to this, some politicians will boast that they know so and so in the court. Or, Mr. So is my friend or relation and he will give fair judgment. When this happens, then corruption is introduced into the system,’’ he pointed out.
The resident Commissioner kicked against the 180 days’ window provided for the election petition to be tried and be dispensed with in Federal High Court having 60 days, Appeal Court has 60 days and Supreme Court is given 60 days.
Igini saw the provision in the Act as a sheer waste of time as appellants spends billions of Naira on services to lawyers and courts while contesting for victory.
‘We spend billions of Naira in the Supreme Court and at the end of the day, we get nothing,’’ he said.
Unlike in United States of America, he said courts in most states use two while use one week even less in thrashing out election petitions to stop circumventing the election processes.
The state NUJ Chairman, Amos Etuk thanked the Resident Electoral Commissioner for the seminar, and enjoined journalists to make good use of the knowledge gained during the seminar.
