INEC Speaks On Actual Date For 2023 Presidential Election

• INEC Speaks On Actual Date For 2023 Presidential Election

EKO HOT BLOG reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday said it will not announce the actual date for the 2023 presidential election until the Electoral Act Amendment Bill is signed into law.

INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this in Abuja during the commission’s first quarterly consultative meeting with political parties.

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“On the Electoral Amendment Bill currently before the National Assembly, the Commission is encouraged by the Senate President’s assurance to give priority attention to the Bill when the National Assembly reconvenes from its recess today, and the commitment by the President to assent to the Bill as soon as the issue of mode of primaries by political parties is resolved. We look forward to a speedy passage of the Bill, which is crucial to our preparations for future elections,” Yakubu said.

“As soon as it is signed into law, the Commission will quickly release the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the 2023 General Election based on the new law.”

Furthermore, Yakubu said the most serious and potent impediment to the successful conduct of the 2023 general elections, is the lingering debacle between the Executive and the Legislature on the fate of the 2021 Electoral (Amendment) Bill.

“While time is dangerously running out for the resolution of the disputes between the two arms, the IPAC is of the position that the controversy may have been contrived in the first instance, purely and clearly in the pursuits of narrow and self-centered political ambitions of some of the gladiators.

“We are therefore, using this occasion to once again make our strident call for the immediate resolution of the unnecessary impasse over the Electoral Amendment Bill in the superior and overriding national interest. The IPAC has persistently suggested at various forums that, the first rational step in the circumstance, is for the two apex legislative houses to immediately expunge from the Bill, the provisions that make it mandatory for political parties to use Direct Primary elections in the selection of their flag bearers in general elections.

“Going forward, we have also called on the President to thereafter, assent to the Bill without delay. Our concern in the IPAC, is that failure to reach a compromise in the short run may invariably translate into the death of the other very crucial provisions, such as the provisions on the Electronic Transmission of election results”, he stated.