An Enugu-based lawyer and former National Auditor of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Ray Nnaji, says the ruling All Progressives Congress is deliberately delaying electoral reforms ahead of the 2027 general elections to enable them “to continue in the old ways”.
Nnaji, who spoke in Enugu, said “the old ways encourage electoral result manipulations”. He said the 2022 Electoral Act makes courts handicapped in deciding electoral cases. He therefore appealed to the National Assembly to amend the Act, specifically to make “the burden of proving election results to be on INEC”.
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He said, “We want a situation where INEC should defend results it declares. It should not be the person who lost the election as it is today. Also, the uploading should be at the right time so that everybody would see the results from the units as fast as possible. It should not be a situation that INEC will claim there were glitches, but very late in the day, it would announce results. And the court can do nothing except what is provided in the law.”
He also advocated punishments for perpetrators of election malpractices to serve as a deterrent to others. In his words, “Obviously there should be punishment attached to electoral malpractices so that people would be very careful in manipulating results. The laws are there, but the implementation is the problem. The truth is that if you don’t provide certain things that will help the implementation, it will be very difficult. It makes it very difficult for courts to interpret outside what is provided in the law.
“For instance, uploading results from electoral units is not made mandatory. If it had been made mandatory, glitches which were introduced by INEC would not have arisen. The Act should say any result not uploaded real time from the units should be invalid. But from the current Electoral Act, INEC has virtually nothing to do. Sometimes INEC won’t even put defence because they have nothing to do. The burden lies is on the loser. He is the one to go to INEC to get certified true copies of results. And INEC officials will frustrate him by denying him access to the copies.
“All these things should be simplified by shifting the burden to INEC which has the custody of these documents. With that, INEC won’t be part of malpractices because they will know that proving the results before the courts will be a herculean task.”
He said as a result of these complexities, the anticipated electoral reforms would be very difficult. He accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of insincerity.
He said, “Who is the Senate president deceiving? He said it would be fast tracked. Meanwhile there will only be four days after the resumption of the National Assembly. Some of them are beneficiaries of these loopholes. That is why they are not even fast and determined for the reforms. The funny thing is that when you take it for the presidential assent, he will tell you that there is no longer time. He might refuse to sign it. The idea of vetoing the president is not there because he has the majority in the National Assembly. And it will be 90 days before he returns it. They know what they are doing.”
Nnaji also berated the opposition for being inactive. “I quarrel with the opposition because they would have put in pressure on the electoral reforms before now. By now it should have remained for the president’s assent. The president knows what he is doing. APC already has about 31 governors. Opposition has been crippled. Anything that the president wants has no opposition. It is very bad.”