Party Primaries: Failure To Amend Conflicting Laws Cripples INEC Over Controversial Candidates – Jega

Party Primaries: Failure To Amend Conflicting Laws Cripples INEC Over Controversial Candidates – Jega

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, yesterday said the commission was helpless in the face of controversial emergence of candidates   because the National Assembly had failed to amend sections of the law which created such opportunities.

Jega who gave a keynote address during an interface between INEC and traditional rulers over peaceful elections in 2015, expressly stated that the inability of the National Assembly to conclude work on the amendment of the Electoral Act created a lacuna that the political parties were exploiting which he described as constraint to the commission.

He said INEC after its experiences in the 2011 elections and other elections conducted since then, made presentation and recommendations to the National Assembly on the need to plug the loopholes in the Electoral Act and the Constitution.

INEC, he pointed out, submitted these recommendations about two years ago and the National Assembly had gone very far up to the stage called reconciliation.

He added “there is an existing provision in the Electoral Act, which actually creates confusion and conflict, constraining what INEC does in terms of regulating and ensuring internal party democracy. For example, section 31 of the Electoral Act says that when a party does primaries and submits the names to INEC, INEC will not reject those names for any reason whatsoever.

“There is also section 87 of the same Electoral Act which says that candidates in political party primaries should emerge through democratic processes. Now, both the Electoral Act and the Constitution mandated INEC to monitor primaries of political parties.

“Anytime the parties are conducting primaries, we will send people to monitor and prepare reports about what transpired there and see whether they complied with the party’s constitution, electoral act and constitutional provisions.

“However, in 2011, we had situations where we sent monitors that returned with reports, detailing who emerged in the party primaries through democratic means in accordance with the dictates of Electoral Act, but the names that the party secretariats forwarded as nominations to INEC were totally different.

Some of them, for example, would ignore the candidates that emerged and picked others, he added.

the candidate who finished third. There are cases they would even ignore the entire list and send an entirely different person who did not participate in the party primaries.

“Of course, a provision in that Electoral Act created that ambiguity and confusion and there is nothing we could do other than to accept whatever names they gave to us to avoid them accusing us of interfering with the internal affairs of the political parties or violating the provisions of the Electoral Act.

“But by so doing, the atmosphere was characterised by confusion that many candidates went to court to contest it and at the end, long after inauguration, we saw the court ruling in favour of the candidates that won the primaries.

“We have made recommendations that this particular provision needs to be corrected to improve the process and ensure that parties comply with the rules of submitting the democratically elected candidates in the primaries should be the ones presented to us. We are hopeful that despite the closeness of the election, the electoral act will be amended” . He said.

He regretted that that it has taken time but we are still hopeful that the legal framework will be amended before the 2015 election because it will help us to improve on many areas of discrepancies. I crave your indulgence to give one example regarding the political party primaries and nominations of candidates.”

The INEC chairman further expressed concern on the attitude of politicians warning that the conduct of many critical stakeholders in the political arena is capable of generating and inciting conflicts and violence, which might pose serious threat to the 2015 general election.

Speaking further, the election umpire boss faulted the legal provision of parties submitting to INEC names of candidates who did not even contest party primaries, even as he assured that the Commission is very much ready for the 2015 general election.

Enumerating the challenges and tasks ahead of the Commission, Professor Jega noted: “We are confident that the prospects of having good election in 2015 are very bright. We harbour no illusion that our preparations are perfect, but we will spare no effort to ensure that as far as INEC is concerned, we are operationally prepared to deliver better elections in 2015 that what we had with the 2011 election.”

“The greatest challenge and threat to 2015 general elections, as we see it in the Commission, is the conduct capable of generating and inciting conflicts and violence by many critical stakeholders in the political arena. I believe we all need to work together to ensure that those tendencies are checked, ensure that peace reigns and that politicians in particular conduct themselves with the attitude of activity and responsibility required for the success of electoral processes,” he noted.

Itemizing other challenges confronting 2015 general election, Professor Jega said that the failure to amend the legal framework especially on the conduct of the party primaries poses another serious threat.” ‎According to him.

Source: Leadership News