Reps to urge YarÁdua to withdraw electoral reform bills

Bola Badmus, Abuja - 08.06.2009

HOUSE of Representatives is taking step to urge President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, to withdraw all the seven bills on electoral reform from the two chambers of the National Assembly, without further delay.

The move by the House is coming on the heels of the call by former president of the Senate, Senator Ken Nnamani, that the National Assembly should go ahead with the passage of the bills while making necessary and practical amendments without being constrained by what the president inserted in the bills.

Nnamani made the call at the weekend at a workshop organised by National Democratic Institute (NDI) entitled: Civil Society Strategy Session and Workshop on International Standards for Electoral Reform, which took place in Abuja.

“Various suggestions for reform count for only so much. The president was not bound by what the Electoral Reform Committee proposed. While you should give the bills presented by the Presidency due deference and respect, you, likewise, are not constrained by them,” he said.

The House of Representatives recently sent all the bills to its 44- member committee on the review of the 1999 Constitution as it avoided debate on them due to what it observed as the linkage between the bills and amendment of the constitution.

A source close to the 44- member committee on review of 1999 Constitution confided that the committee had resolved to advise the leadership of the House to urge the president to withdraw all the affected bills.

The latest move by the committee was said to have followed its discovery that the bills before it were not properly drafted and contained a lot of contradictory clauses.