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Electoral Amendment Bill: Umahi backs Buhari for refusing to sign bill

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CLEMENT NNACHI, Abakaliki

 

Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for refusing to assent to the New Electoral Bill presented  to him by the National  Assembly.

Umahi gave the commendation in Abakaliki the State capital on Thursday during a courtesy visit on him by the Registrar /Chief Executive of National Examinations Council (NECO) Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi at the Government House .

He said that the signing of the Bill will truncate democracy considering the huge financial implications involved in the exercise.

“Let me congratulation Mr President for refusing to sign that electoral bill, you see when we are making laws we have to look at all the factors, this  is a country that when you are defeated in any primary you refuse to accept defeat, imagine the number of our local government, 774, the number of wards, you now go to conduct primaries in all these wards”

“maybe for the President  and after that the Senate and the rest of the positions, even if you are doing all of them in one day expect petitions by the number of political parties times the number of wards”

“So it will just truncate our democracy there is no doubt about that,  Nobody has considered the amount of confusion that will arise out of that because everybody that contests election will like to go to court”

Umahi urged the National Assembly to look into this litigation aspect, when the cost of this direct primaries is taken into consideration, it is going to be too much because for every ward that the court rules out, their must be a repeat of the exercise.

“So I think that we have not gotten to that level of maturity, level of having the spirit of sportsmanship, level of accepting defeat, when people know that they have been defeated, they want to see if they can technically or fraudulently manipulate the system within the judiciary”

“So I think that the issue of political primaries should be left to the political parties, this is not about APC or PDP, everybody is looking at the implication, let us take another look at it”

The Governors debunked insinuations that Governors will hijack the process stating ” is it not the Governors that are at home everytime, do they not have representation in every unit, so they are at home with the people, if you are not at home with the people how will the people know you”

“Some of you want to be governors, very soon we shall not be governors any more but we are looking at what will bring stability to our democracy and sustain it, so the national assembly should take a deeper look at the application so that when it will start happening they will say we foresaw this and we advised against it.

Earlier in his speech, the Registrar/Chief Executive of National Examination Council (NECO) Professor Dantani Ibrahim Wushishi, commended Ebonyi State Government for the support and assistance to the Council.

“it is evident that in the whole of the South-East, it is only in Ebonyi State that our examination was not disrupted during the nationwide Endsars protest.

Professor Wushishi assured of the Council readiness to partner with the government for the overall development of children.

 

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