Breaking: INEC Reacts To Buhari's Refusal To Sign Electoral Amendment Bill https://acegist.com/2018/12/10/breakinginec-reacts-to-buharis-refusal-to-sign-electoral-amendment-bill/

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has reacted to President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill for the fourth time.

DAILY POST reported on Friday that President Buhari, in a letter to the leadership of the National Assembly, outlined reasons he withheld assent to the bill.

The Bill makes the use of card reader mandatory, and demands that the 2019 elections should not be conducted with incident forms.


INEC said although the rejected bill would have addressed controversies that trailed the 2015 exercise especially the place of technology and others that the amendments seek to address, Nigeria can still have good elections with the extant act.

INEC’s Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Mr. Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, spoke to reporters in Abuja yesterday, explained that the Electoral Act 2010 as amended in 2015 would be the operative law.

He said, “While it may be better to have the necessary amendments to avoid some of the controversies that trailed the 2015 exercise, especially the place of technology and others the amendments seek to cure, we can still have good elections with the extant act as we did in 2015, which were adjudged free, fair and credible.”

On claims that 13.5 million voters voted for Buhari without full biometric accreditation in 2015, INEC added, “How was this determined? Biometric accreditation does not determine who a person votes for. Put another way, the card reader is used for biometric accreditation. It doesn’t determine how such persons vote.”