Electoral Reform: Committee recommends independent candidacy, others

The Senator Ken Nnammani-led Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee has recommended the inclusion of independent candidacy, creation of Electoral Offences Commission, among others in the bid to improve the standard of elections in Nigeria.
The committee’s recommendation was contained in a report it presented to the Federal Government through the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, in Abuja.
A member of the team and the Executive Director, Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, Clem Nwankwo, stated that ‎one of the key recommendations of the committee is the setting up of Electoral Offences Tribunal.
Nwankwo said: “One of the key recommendations is the setting up of Electoral Offences Tribunal, which is an area we should look into to end electoral violence in the country.
“The second recommendation is constituency de-limitation.
“Constituency de-limitation is a constitutional provision, but hasn’t happened since 1999 when Nigeria returned to democratic rule.
“We recommended the use of technology in the electoral process, starting from the collation of voters, register to minimize the human elements in electoral process as it relates to manipulation of elections.
“We also recommended the use of technology for the transmission of results of elections other than the use of the manual way of transmitting results.
“If technology is used for the transmission of results and it is open to all the political parties, the human elements of manipulation will be reduced.
“May I add that every system can be manipulated if the people decide to violate the law and that is why we recommended the creation of electoral Offences Tribunal.
“The committee also recommended the creation of independent candidacy to deal with the issues of political parties who do not respect their laws as regard nomination of candidates for electoral offices.”
Earlier, while presenting the report, Nnamani noted that the committee had carried out the assignment without any financial backing from the Federal Government, adding that members of the the committee carried out the work using their personal resources.
He therefore called on the Federal Government not to forget the payment of the sitting allowance of members of the committee.
The Federal Government in November 2016 commenced the reform of the country’s electoral laws with the constitution of a constitutional and electoral reforms committee.
The 24-member committee is chaired by Nnamani, a former President of the Senate, while Dr. Mamman Lawal of Bayero University, Kano is the secretary.
Other members of the committee include Dr. Muiz Banire, Dr. Clement Nwankwo, Chief A.C. Ude and Tahir, Director, Legal Drafting, Federal Ministry of Justice, amongst others.
The Committee is expected to review electoral environment, laws and experiences from recent elections conducted in Nigeria and make recommendations to strengthen and achieve the conduct of free and fair elections in Nigeria.
It would be recalled that in April 2016, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minster of Justice, revealed that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had started consultations with the leadership of the National Assembly and the judiciary to identify the electoral laws that needed to be reformed.
“I have begun consultations with the leadership of the National Assembly and the judiciary to identify key laws and priority areas for reform. Our priority areas will be clearly outlined in our justice sector reform that we will propose to the National Assembly and align it with their agenda in order to achieve reform within the tenure of this administration,” Malami had told participants at the Nigerian Civil Society Situations Room’s Stakeholders Forum on Elections in Abuja.
Since the return of democracy in 1999, there have been several attempts at reviewing the electoral process.
One of the most critical of such efforts was in 2007 when the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, following the outcry that trailed the 2007 general elections, set up a committee led by former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mohammed Uwais, to make recommendations for the reform of the electoral system.
The 22-member Uwais panel submitted its report on December 11, 2008.
The committee recommended among others the establishment of commissions to deal with electoral offences, constituency delimitation and political parties’ registration and regulation and that some of the power vested in the Independent National Electoral Commission and the State Independent Electoral commissions would be transferred to the new commissions.
The late former president however forwarded a modified version of the Uwais report to the legislature in 2009.
In March 2010, then acting President, Goodluck Jonathan, forwarded the full version of the Uwais report to the National Assembly for approval.
Though some of the recommendations turned out controversial, some of them were adopted.
Another attempt at fixing the electoral system came in 2014 at the constitutional conference, under the leadership of former Chief Justice, Idris Kutigi.
The report of that conference is yet to be implemented‎.