THERE are strong indications that the 2022 Electoral Act will be amended to reinstate statutory delegates in political party primaries ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio made this known while addressing the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja on Monday.
Akpabio described the omission of statutory delegates from party primaries in the 2022 Electoral Act as a costly mistake that must be corrected before the next round of elections.
Speaking on the need for the amendment, the lawmaker said, “There were defects in the last Electoral Act that need to be addressed. In the 2023 elections and the 2022 primaries, we inadvertently created what I may call super-delegates. Without any deliberate intention by the parliament, statutory delegates including the president, vice president, governors, deputy governors, members of parliament, and local council chairmen were excluded from the primaries”.
He underscored that this exclusion reduced the number of participants in the selection of candidates, making democracy less participatory.
“Democracy is about numbers. When statutory delegates were omitted, it meant that unless one contested as an ad hoc delegate, they had no role in selecting party flag bearers for legislative, governorship, and presidential elections. We need to fix this,” he said.
Additionally, Akpabio stated that the National Assembly would review the powers given to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the 2022 Electoral Act.
He added, “It seemed as if INEC became the final arbiter on candidate selection, rather than the political parties. We must ensure that parties retain the power to choose candidates who best represent their manifestos and have the integrity and track record to deliver democratic dividends to the people.”
Beyond electoral reforms, Akpabio also called on the NBA to sanitize the legal profession, highlighting the presence of fraudulent individuals practicing law without proper qualifications.
The Senate president stated that some senior figures in the legal profession were never actually called to the bar.
“It is the duty of the NBA to weed out such quacks to protect the integrity of the profession,” Senator Akpabio told the NBA delegate.
The NBA President Afam Osigwe (SAN) in his response, urged the National Assembly to use the ongoing constitutional amendment process to implement reforms in the justice sector.
Osigwe recounted how he exposed an impostor at the Igbosere Magistrate Court in Lagos in the early 1990s. He revealed that the individual, whom he knew as a History graduate from the University of Calabar, was falsely practicing as a lawyer.