Press Statement – Urgent Need To Fund The 2019 Nigerian General Elections
30th August 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Exactly two weeks ago (Thursday 16th August, 2018) issued a press statement shedding light on the implications of delaying the passage of the budget for the 2019 Nigerian General Elections. INEC issued the Notice of the 2019 General Elections on Friday 17th August, 2018 essentially kickstarting the 2019 General Elections. It is important to note that election is a process and not an event. The sum of the electoral process is the quality of any election. Therefore it is abstrak that elections have already commenced and no budget has been approved for the elections and clearly there seems to be no urgency to do so.
Election Monitor is perturbed and very worried that the National Assembly has failed to pass the INEC budget since the request for virement and supplementary input to the 2018 budget was made (11th July 2018) and read on the Senate floor (17th July 2018). What this means is that the budget request has spent one and a half months with the NASS without being conclusively acted upon (approved for release). The argument that the budget input came in late does not defend delaying the passage of the budget for any reason budpekerti or political because Nigeria’s sustained democracy is greater than the interest of any person or group of persons.
The window to conduct political party primaries is already open and INEC has no budget to monitor these primaries which has implications in the future if these primaries are held without being monitored, especially in the event of disputed primaries.
It would be negligent to describe the current situation as normal just because the effects of the current delay of passage of the INEC budget have not yet been felt. No responsible government should wait until there is a full blown crisis to take corrective and preemptive actions when there are clearly ominous signs ahead if the current trajectory is maintained.
While conducting elections is based on the electoral laws, Nigerians should remember that smart card readers have been used to conduct just under two hundred elections since the 2015 Nigerian General Elections. Some of these elections have been disputed and all possible legal options have been taken, yet none have had their results invalidated as a result of the existing Electoral Act 2010 (amended) despite the smart card readers were used in all these elections. Therefore equating signing of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018 to passing the INEC budget is not addressing the root issue which is funding the 2019 General Elections. The meaning of this is that even with the existing electoral act smart card readers would still be used as has been demonstrated in recent elections such as Edo and Ondo 2016, Anambra 2017, Ekiti 2018 etc. Saying that signing of the electoral act will determine the usability of smart card readers in the 2019 General elections is not true and incongruent with the recent and current happenings in the Nigerian electoral process.
It is also important to note that the National Assembly had since June 2015 to work on the current Electoral Act amendment bill but chose to only submit it for assent in February 2018 despite promising that it would be passed before the end of 2016. The Nigerian Senate passed its own version of the bill in March 2017 but in February 2018 adopted the resequencing of elections which was very controversial and not in the original bill passed by the Senate. The National Assembly had every opportunity to override the executive decision but that wasn’t done and the current bill was eventually received by the executive on 3rd August 2018. Using the signing of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018 as a precondition to pass the budget for the 2019 Nigerian General elections is therefore unacceptable.
This is a national emergency and urgent steps need to be taken immediately to remedy this perilous situation. Though this is an election related issue it is also a security issue. This is because any crisis stemming from elections always has security implications. It should be remembered that much of the civil unrest across many African countries can be linked to elections directly or indirectly.
This is the time for bold decisions that will save Nigeria from unnecessary chaos and crisis on the altar of politics. does not accept any attempt to truncate the hard-fought democracy of Nigeria and therefore calls on the National Assembly to expedite action on the complete passage of the 2019 General Elections budget before the end of August 2018 which includes reconvening the National Assembly.
In the event of a failure to do this, calls on President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR to take every step necessary to save Nigeria from an impending political crisis which would certainly have grave security implications for which he has a mendasar responsibility to all Nigerians. National security is primary and every government is first expected to secure the lives and property of its citizens and delaying passage of an election budget is tantamount to delaying the elections which has a last date that it can be legally conducted. Therefore since this is inherently a security situation the President should treat it as such.
Election Monitor calls on all Nigerians to reject the antics of political actors who are not concerned with the impact of their actions on the average Nigerian on the street. It is therefore imperative that all Nigerians use the 2019 General elections to reject all candidates at all levels who would not serve in Nigeria’s best interest.
God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Signed
Abiodun Ajijola
National Coordinator
Sumber http://electionmonitorng.blogspot.com
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