Electoral bill: Immediately remove provisions on direct primaries-CDD urges NASS

Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has called on the National Assembly to immediately remove the provisions on direct primaries as raised by President Mohammad Buhari.

CDD’s Director, Idayat Hassan, in a statement in Abuja said the call became imperative against the backdrop of President Mohammad Buhari’s decision to decline assent to the Electoral Bill 2021.

Hassan also urged the National Assembly to thereafter re-present the bill to the President for his assent.

She said that the National Assembly should redeem the situation to strengthen Nigeria’s democracy.

“As the election is just 14 months away, the CDD is calling on the National Assembly to immediately toe two immediate options.”

“Which is either veto the President and pass the Electoral Act 2021 bill into an act of the National Assembly ,or immediately remove the provisions on direct primaries as raised by the President and immediately re-present the bill to the President for his assent.”

Hassan said that “We must not allow a single provision truncate the goodness in the proposed electoral bill”.

According to her, Nigeria is in dire need of a new and robust framework for the conduct of elections.

She added that the reform in the Electoral Bill 2021 would improve the quality of elections thereby imbuing citizen’s trust in our democracy.

Hassan said that the National Assembly as the true representative of the people should not allow the huge human and financial resources that went into the Electoral Bill 2021 to waste.

This she said was from drafting to readings at the floor, the public hearing, the committee works, the retreat, the conference committee among others.

“The National Assembly must act, and the time is now,save our elections and our democracy,” she said.