Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu on Monday told a delegation of the British High Commission in Nigeria led by the High Commissioner, Mr. Paul Arkwright that ongoing legislative work on the Electoral Act and the Constitution Amendments would be completed in a matter of weeks.
He thanked the UK Government for showing enormous interest in the nation's democratic process and growth assuring that the Electoral Act and Constitution amendment was top on the priority list of the 8th National Assembly to ensure better governance and smooth elections in 2019.
According to him
“The 2019 election is very important to Nigeria. The amendments to the Electoral Act and the Constitution all form part of the ongoing electoral reform to continue to improve on the quality of our elections.
“In the previous amendment, a timeframe was set for the determination of election petitions. Now we are working on setting a timeframe for pre-election matters. In the previous amendments, we also created a window for direct and indirect primary by political parties. In the current amendment, we want to make more elaborate provisions regarding direct party primaries for political parties that may wish to adopt it to ensure greater fairness, transparency, and internal democracy in choosing their flag bearers.
“We are also working to lift the restrictions on the use of electronic voting by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. That way, it will be up to the election management body to determine if it is sufficiently prepared to deploy electronic voting or when to adopt electronic voting.
“The bottom line is that the Conference Committees on both the Electoral Act and Constitution Amendment are meeting separately this week to conclude work on the entire amendments to ensure smoother and more credible electoral processes as well as promote good governance of the country”, he added.
Arkwright had stated that the purpose of the visit was to understand political developments in the Senate and the country in general. He expressed UK's interest in both amendments.
