Sen. Christopher Ekpenyong, Senator representing Akwa Ibom North-West, has expressed dissatisfaction over the current electoral Act guiding the conduct of elections in the country, calling on the National Assembly to look into the Act so as to address the anomalies affecting smooth conduct of polls. He made the call on Thursday while speaking with journalists after he was sworn in as a senator by the President of the Senate, Dr Ahmad Lawan.
The second swearing-in followed Ekpenyong’s victory at the just concluded re-run election ordered by the court and conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on January 25. His initial election was nullified by the Court of Appeal.
It was gathered that Ekpenyong of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defeated Godswill Akpabio of the All Progressives Congress (APC) having scored 134,717 as against 83,820 votes.
According to him
“Thank God, I have come back to meet the discussion on the Electoral Act amendment because I am going to contribute. What I have seen practically, the Electoral Bill and Act must be looked into properly and reviewed to give Nigerians the opportunity to choose their leaders.
“Most importantly, our Electoral Act needs to be reviewed to give opportunity; People are talking about electronic voting system; yes electronic voting system would have been good if every Nigerian was educated.
“But when you look at the poor, the uneducated in the farm, what we should do now is to make sure the card reader becomes a very strong device, both in accreditation and determination of who votes in the elections.
“And it must be the card reader that determines the vote that is being cast, and not just saying when we go to the court, the court will say the card reader is just a mere device and not recognised by the law.
“So, we must make sure the card reader is recognised by the law, so we can improve on our electoral system”, the lawmaker added.
