New Electoral Law Bans Consensus Candidature

All candidates for future elections in the country must emerge through properly conducted primaries, as the new section 87 of the 2010 Electoral Act has outlawed the use of affirmation for endorsing candidates by consensus.

The law provides strictly for compulsory balloting at primary elections by parties with prescription that only aspirants with highest number of votes cast at primaries will be forwarded to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as candidates for the main elections.

This is one of the provisions of the 2010 Electoral Act whose harmonised version was passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly yesterday.
The final passage of the Act yesterday at the Senate followed the adoption of the report of the Joint National Assembly Conference Committee, which harmonised the differences in the versions passed by each chamber of the federal legislature.

The new electoral law, which is now ready for transmission to President Goodluck Jonathan for assent, also gives INEC longer time to prepare for the 2011 elections as it moved the period for the completion of registration of voters from the existing 120 days before elections to 60 days as requested by the commission.
This gives INEC up to late November to conclude the update of the voters register.

The report presented by Senate Whip, Senator Kanti Bello, shows that Section 25 of the new law which fixed the election of the president before that of state governors is retained despite pressure by some state chief executives to reverse the arrangement. It also increased limits of election spending by candidates by 100 percent.

To further ensure internal democracy in parties, the new law bars the use of courts to stop the conduct of primaries and placed restriction on the replacement of candidates by primaries except on the ground of death.

Also, Section 91 of the new law pushed up expenses for presidential election from N500 million to N1 billion, and that of governors from N100 million to N200 million.
The law also places the maximum election expenses for National Assembly at N40 million for Senate and N20 million for House of Representatives and provides for N10 million for state assembly, N10 million for local government chairman and N1 million for councillors.

Despite pressure from some state governors, the National Assembly maintained its position on the new order of election fixing that of the president ahead of the governors.
The new election order provides that the 2011 elections are to start with the National Assembly elections, followed by the presidential election and then governorship and that of state assemblies.

State governors had last week mounted pressure on the leadership of the National Assembly to reverse the order and place the election of governors ahead of that of the President, following fears that conducting the presidential election will give the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a lead and reduce their chances of winning in their gubernatorial polls.