Electoral Bill: Mode of party’s primary should be made public at least 9 months to the election, Akeredolu’s Aide, Poroye Biyi urges National Assembly to legalize time frame
…says Akeredolu is the best Governor in combating insecurity challenges in his state, stressing that Ondo State is the most peaceful state in Nigeria
A Chieftain of All Progressives Congress, APC in Ondo state and Aide to the Ondo State Governor, Prince Biyi Poroye, has urged the National Assembly to legalize time frame which mode of party’s primary should be made public. He said that the mode of conduct of party’s primary should be made public at least 3 months to the election.
While addressing newsmen in Akure, the state capital of Ondo State on Friday, Prince Poroye, described Ondo State Governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu SAN as the best Governor in combating insecurity challenges in his state, stressing that Ondo State is the most peaceful state in Nigeria as of today. He further appreciated the road Infrastructural development of the Governor since the inception of his administration in the state. In the same vain, he commended the recent promise made by the Governor that he will soon settle all the outstanding salary of the government workers in a due course.
On political party’s primary, he said, Nigerians are ready for any type of party primary adopted by the National Assembly but the major concern of the political actors is that such primary should be made known to the public at least 9 months to the primary election to enable the aspirants to know how to prepare.
Poroye said, “as a political analyst, I have critical studied the Electoral Bill and discovered that Nigerians are not really concerned about the type of primaries to be adopted whether direct or indirect or consensus but mode of conduct”.
“Whether is going to be direct or indirect or consensus, what measures have we put in place to ensure that the process is free and fair. If it is indirect which is going to involve all the registered members in the party, how do you do it? How do you come come about it? If it is Consensus, how do you come about it? What Method? These are the questions need to be addressed in a clear term”. For me, it is good that the President returned the Electoral Bill back to the National Assembly, stressing that Nigeris should have one way of electing our representatives at the primary level which is good, but the major concern of Nigerians is that there must be a time frame which mode of party primary election, list of delegates (for indirect) and list of registered party members (for direct) should be made known to the public”.
“For instance, you cannot have three ways of electing candidates at the primary level and one or two weeks to the election aspirants do not know type of primary election they want to participate in.
At least 9 months to the primary election, aspirants should be well informed about the type of primary they are going to use so that aspirants will not be wasting their resources and be working as if they’re blind people, and at the end of day or few weeks to the primary, somebody will just come up and say, no, we are going to use direct primary when there are speculation all over the place that there are going to use indirect primary. The Electoral Bill or Law should make the time frame clear without ambiguity. We should not live by speculations”.
“The processes should be backed up by law, it must be published, pasted across polling units or party secretariats”.
“For instance, if the party leadership in Ondo State agrees to use consensus, nobody will be wasting his or her time talking to the generality of the people, or wasting resources, there will be no need for confusion here and there”.
“You would recall in the last governorship election in Ondo State that the Governor did mention to the people that he would agree with any type of party’s primary adopted by the leadership of the party. The statement shown to us that even the Governor did not know the type of primary the party was going to use even when it was already two weeks to the election. That was too bad and not good for Democratic rule. There must be a general and permanent solution to that”.
“We have interacted with people in the National Assembly and they are not looking at it from this direction, that is why we are making it public so that they can make amendment also in that direction when they are making input, the time frame should be stated clearly in the law,” Poroye opined.
