The House of Representatives has given its approval to a bill aimed at amending the Electoral Act 2022. The proposed amendment seeks to prevent the annulment of election outcomes owing to overvoting by electoral officers.
The bill’s proponent, Representative Abubakar Fulata, led discussions regarding the fundamental principles of the bill during a session at the House in Abuja. He suggested penalties for electoral officers found guilty of misconduct.
He said, “Equally important is the need to punish the presiding officer who allowed himself or herself to be used to perpetrate fraud and injustice.”
According to Fulata, this bill seeks to amend sections 51 (2) and the deletion of sections 51(3) and 51(4) as well as sections 84 (8).
“As it stands, the provisions of sections 51(2) (3) and (4) seem to deliberately target legitimate winners of elections instead of the criminally minded individuals who connive with custodians of electoral materials to cancel their votes.”
He said that as guardians of electoral materials, the stipulation was needed for deterrence. He added that even if it was presumed that the individual who added the votes was not known, the winner of the election in a particular unit could not be party to a deliberate act that would invalidate their votes.
“Most of the time, candidates target the strong holes of their opponents leveraging on the provisions of this section to add one or two votes to discredit the outcomes of the elections in those polling units,” he said.
He said the move was to create an advantage for the losers.
A considerable number of legislators backed the motion, asserting that it was high time to hold electoral officers accountable for their role in nullifying results. The bill received unanimous support and progressed to a second reading. Subsequently, it was referred to the House Committee on Electoral Matters for further legislative deliberation.