Controversy over legislators’ rejection of bill seeking absolute majority to win presidential, governorship polls
• Lawmakers prioritising politics over genuine electoral reforms, opposition parties allege
• Bill unfair, undemocratic – IPAC chair
• It’s a recipe for instability, says Ajanaku
The rejection of a piece of legislation that seeks to amend Sections 134 and 179 of the 1999 Constitution to include the requirement of securing at least 50 per cent votes to be elected president or governor by the House of Representatives has sparked controversy among Nigerians. Although the opposition parties allege that the lawmakers might have prioritised politics over genuine electoral reforms, some political analysts gave it hard knocks, SODIQ OMOLAOYE reports.
At a recent legislative session, lawmakers in the House of Representatives chorused a resounding “no” to a proposed bill mandating presidential and governorship candidates to secure more than 50 per cent of the total votes cast to be declared winners.
The rejected bill, sponsored by Awaji-Inombek Abiante (PDP, Rivers), seeks to impose a stringent requirement on presidential and governorship hopefuls by compelling them to clinch an absolute majority at the poll to be declared winner.
The bill sought to amend sections 134 and 179 of the 1999 Constitution by removing the simple majority rule for presidential and governorship candidates.
The 1999 Constitution provides that to win the presidential election, a candidate needs to obtain 25 per cent of the votes in at least two-thirds of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), along with an overall simple majority.
If a candidate fails to meet both requirements, a run-off will occur between the candidate with the highest vote count and the candidate with the most votes across most states.
Section 134 (1) of the constitution states that a candidate for an election to the Office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected, where the candidate has the majority of votes cast at the election; and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Many Nigerians believe that the rejected legislation sought to avert a repeat of the situation witnessed in the 2023 presidential election when the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, clinched victory by garnering 8.79 million votes representing about 37 per cent of the total votes cast.
If Abiante’s proposed framework were applied for the 2023 election, Tinubu would not have been declared the winner in the first ballot as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would have called for a run-off election between him and his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 6,984,520 votes to emerge second in the election.
Presenting the bill, Abiante proposed that in a presidential race with more than two candidates, a candidate must secure a majority of the total votes, which constitutes over 50 per cent. He proposed that the same framework should also be used for governorship elections.
Nevertheless, Abiante was denied the opportunity to initiate the debate on the bill by the lawmakers. During the session, Speaker Abbas Tajudeen called for the bill to be considered for a second reading, but the dissenting “nays” outweighed the supporting “ayes.”
Surprised by the turn of events, the Speaker conducted another round of voice voting, which again favoured those opposing the bill. Subsequently, he ruled in favour of those advocating for the proposed legislation to be dismissed.
The Guardian gathered that the rejection of the bill aggravated apprehension among some members of the opposition parties, who accused the lawmakers of playing petty politics with a critical legislation. They argued that even if the proposed legislation won’t be passed into law, the lawmakers should have had a proper debate on its merits and demerits.
Some political observers, who share the sentiment of those angered by the action of the lawmakers, argue that such legislation would ensure that an elected president or governor garners broad-based support from the electorate for greater legitimacy and representation in governance.
But critics of the proposal insist that even if the bill is passed into law, it will not solve the inherent challenges in the nation’s electoral process. In their views, in a country as vast and heterogeneous as Nigeria, securing an absolute majority of votes cast in a presidential or governorship election poses a formidable challenge for even the most formidable political contenders.
Ironically, what the bill seeks to achieve is not new globally. Several countries practice a system where a presidential candidate must score more than 50 per cent of the votes to be declared the winner in a contest. Some of the countries that operate this system include France, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mauritius, Bolivia, among others. Even in the United States where Nigeria copied its presidential system from, a presidential candidate must secure a majority of the Electoral College votes, which usually translates to winning more than 50 per cent of the total electoral votes to become the president.
Acting National Chairman, National Rescue Mission (NRM), Chinedu Obi, told The Guardian that the decision of the lower chamber to throw away the bill was unfortunate, stressing that the country needs to elect a president with very wide acceptance.
Obi reasoned that the idea behind the bill is to stop the era of winner takes all in the country’s political landscape.
He said: “You can see that the current government scored less than 40 per cent of the total votes in the 2023 poll and they are in government. The question is: What happened to that other 60 per cent of Nigerians that say I’m on the other side.
“For inclusion, what I think the sponsor of that bill wanted to do is to bridge that gap where the winner takes all. So, I am surprised that the National Assembly could not proceed with that bill. And for me, the intention would be for us to remain where we are where someone could find his/her way into government through any means.
“Now, if you have a situation where if you don’t score a particular number of votes you can’t be declared winner, it would create an opportunity for some sort of competition and those who have not been able to score that will know that they need to do extra work, which means you need to bring more persons together to be able to achieve your ambition, which is the inclusion we talk about.”
While listing the dangers in the current system, Obi observed that declaring someone with less than 40 per cent of the votes cast as a winner promotes marginalisation.
“Of course, there is a 2/3 spread that is required, but it then means I can comfortably forget the other percentage because you know a certain number of voters is required for you to win. So, I think the National Assembly should look at that bill with a second eye to see its real intention,” he added.
To the National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Shehu Gabam, who also feels the lawmakers were wrong in dismissing the bill, having a threshold of 50 per cent of votes cast for a president or governor to emerge would ensure legitimacy.
Alluding to what happened in the 2023 presidential election where President Tinubu was declared winner after scoring 37 per cent of the total votes cast, Gabam argued that such a scenario is not good for a nation with over 200 million people.
He said: “It is an excellent bill taking away all sentiments associated with that. This is because you will be talking about legitimacy where somebody that will be elected will be proud that he was elected by virtue of the fact that the percentage that is required to give that legitimacy was established.
“The moment you take that away, you are creating a room for all sorts of nonsense to happen. And then it affects the fundamental foundation of our democracy. The constitution must be precise on the percentage that is needed to declare somebody. When you break the law, you find it difficult to correct it and sometimes you have to break the law to correct the law.
“In this case, people that got less than the 50 per cent vote were declared winners. For instance, Nigeria has over 90 million registered voters. If you look at the election that produced President Shehu Shagari then, it was about eight million votes. Now what is the vote that produced Tinubu?
“You have a nation that has over 250 million population and you have less than 10 million that voted for that person to be president. Where do you find legitimacy?
“Also, for a governor that has a population of two or three million in the states getting about 100,000 or 200,000 votes to be declared governor, where is the legitimacy? Where does he derive legitimacy? Our democracy is collapsing simply because legitimacy has been taken away. That’s simply what it is.”
Insisting that the 1999 Constitution is weak, the SDP chairman lamented that the document allows mediocrity to prevail over honesty.
While applauding the lawmaker that sponsored the legislation, he cautioned politicians against allowing the system to get eroded perpetually.
“Nobody can blame the military anymore. We politicians are responsible for the decay of the process. The irresponsibility, the recklessness associated with all this is simply because of greed and then the nation suffers; the process suffers and then there’s nothing you can do because we will end up with anarchy.
“That bill is an excellent bill. They need to have amended it, not rejecting it in totality. They should have done that not because of themselves but because of the nation. A nation that has over 250 million people and then you have a president with less than 10 million votes. How do you define that?” he asked.
Executive Director, Africa’s Morning Centre For Public Policy and Good Governance, Chima Christian, however, applauded the lower chamber for rejecting the bill.
According to him, what the sponsor of the legislation aimed to achieve was still not clear.
Describing the bill as a distraction, Christian advised the lawmakers to focus on amending important aspects of the constitution and the Electoral Act, especially the areas of appointing INEC chairman and national commissioners.
He said: “I am happy members of the National Assembly rejected the bill outright. First, I don’t understand the problem the lawmaker was trying to solve. This is because he didn’t clearly state the problems he wanted to solve. If someone wanted to amend the Electoral Act with reference to the last general election, whether or not someone won by simple majority or by outright majority is not in dispute in the elections. Nigeria has always had its peculiar way of declaring elections.
“If someone wants to deal with elections and the electoral ecosystem, I was thinking that he will look at issues of appointment of INEC chair and other commissioners in the commission. I was thinking he will look at laws that will strengthen the technological side of the electoral ecosystem especially now that we are beginning to migrate to technology. We need laws that will make it nearly impossible to compromise the wishes of ordinary Nigerians; laws about the status of the tech like whether it is outright illegal or not to use the IREV and BVAS as required. This is because as of today, the issue of using IREV and BVAS as required still looks like a mere suggestion.”
Noting that there are lots of issues wrong with elections in Nigeria, Christian insisted that the prognosis of the lawmaker that sponsored the bill is off the point.
“It does not address any substantial issue around our elections and I am happy it was thrown away. However, Nigerians should be willing to look at all that happened in the last elections and see how we can document our experiences to form the basis for a comprehensive electoral reform that I expect this National Assembly to pursue before the next general election,” he added.
An election expert with the Centre for Development and Democracy, Armsfree Ajanaku, said though the proponent of the bill had good intentions in terms of trying to deepen democratic participation, elections in Nigeria are usually characterised by very low voter turnout.
He noted that the proposal comes with implications in terms of logistics, saying many elections would go to run-off if such legislation is adopted.
“Are we ready to spend more money on elections? So, I think the fact that the National Assembly decided to turn it down may have to do with other bigger considerations. If we have not deepened our democracy enough, we should not put in place such a stringent threshold that will lead to a stalemate because of the kind of country we are. That kind of legislation can make or mar the very stability of the country. Who would want to put the country in that kind of situation?” he asked.
Ajanaku stated that for such legislation to work, the government and other critical institutions must first put in place sufficient measures that would ensure citizens participation in the democratic process.
He added: “You should address those factors that prevent people from participating robustly in the democratic processes first before you now go on to putting in such stringent rules. If you have not addressed those factors that prevent people from coming out to vote and put those rules, you are going to have elections going into a run-off.
“In practical terms, do you want us to have a situation in which 30 states of the federation do not have elected governors on the first ballot? Can INEC manage that? We need to be realistic and a bit circumspect,” he added.
He urged politicians and those who are occupying positions in government to deliver dividends of democracy to the people so as to energise them to come out and cast their votes.
For the Chairman, Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Yusuf Dantalle, Nigeria is a multi-party state with 19 registered political parties, hence it would be unfair to subject candidates to such stringent rules.
“If each of these parties produces candidates and you are asking one person to have 50 per cent of the votes cast in an election, I think it would be undemocratic and unfair to the system. How would you want the votes to be shared among other political parties, which are also contesting? I think I am with the rejection of the bill by the House,” he stated.
On his part, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Jos, Dung Pam Sha, urged the National Assembly to always consult the citizens before taking decisions in the interests of the nation, noting that “everyone wants a nation that follows the rule of law.”
Sha added: “I want a nation that will recruit new personnel to run the states in a manner that meets international standards.
“I think that whatever the National Assembly is doing must also go to citizens. Citizens have voices. Although we know we have representation there, we also have other levels of government that will have to concur. But this discussion should be subjected to the public so that citizens would have enough voice in it,” he stated. (Guardian)
