A number of questions have arisen since the revelation came into the open that senators and their counterparts in the lower chamber, the members of the House of Representatives, are planning to amend the 2010 Electoral Act in a way that would guarantee them automatic membership of the National Executive Committees (NEC) of their respective political parties. The NEC is the highest policy-making body in the political parties.

The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has been vociferous in its attack on the plan. The party, in different statements, attacked the idea and branded the lawmakers as lacking in democratic spirit.

Last week, the party sent a powerful delegation, led by its National Secretary, Dr. Usman Bugaje, to dialogue with the National Assembly members on the proposed bill which is already part of the 2010 Electoral Act amendment bill being worked on by the lawmakers. In the estimation of the ACN, the inclusion of senators and members of the House of Representatives in the NEC of political parties would make them the single most powerful blocs in the highest policy making bodies of the parties. Such a situation could, according to the party and other commentators, lead to the dictatorship of NASS members at the NECs. To the ACN and other commentators, the law is self-serving and should be jettisoned.There is also the thinking that legislating such a party regulation procedure into the Electoral Act is unnecessary and that party management should be left for the operators to work out.

Although the lawmakers have not truly come into the open with facts and figures in support of their bid, a quick search would reveal that there is more politics in the ongoing bid than lawmaking. Senate President David Mark said, last week, that the law in the works was not self-serving contrary to the booze in the media by its opponents.  He said that the lawmakers were intent on bequeathing a legacy of laws that would sustain the nation’s democracy for years to come.

Senate spokesman, Senator Ayogu Eze, who defended the decision of his colleagues to amend the Electoral Act and guarantee themselves NEC positions, said that the law was fashioned after older democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom. He said senators and members of parliament in those countries were automatic members of the NEC. He said: “I do not want to call names. But except for one or two political parties, most of the members of both houses of the National Assembly are members of the National Executive Committees of other political parties. So, there is nothing strange in what is happening.

“We are only saying entrench this; deepen it because in other democracies like the US, all the senators and members of congress are members of the NEC of their parties. We are not practising democracy in isolation. Democracy is guided by rules, practices and convention, and by association; so, there is nothing strange in it.”

But the lawmakers are either failing to acknowledge the politics in the evolving scenario or missing the point altogether. They have failed to ask why ACN has been leading the opposition to the new law, especially considering the fact that senators of the party are automatic members of the NEC.

The same is true of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).

The incongruous thing in the opposition to the senators’ NEC membership is that the voices of dissent are coming from those who have nothing to lose if the amendment comes into effect. That goes to show that, rather than just recognise the ongoing process in the realm of the law, the National Assembly has to come to terms with the underlying politics.

Investigations have shown that the opposition parties decided to launch an attack on the senators’ bid for NEC as a result of the thinking that if the PDP members are portrayed as greedy and selfish, a big electoral coup would have been perfected ahead of the 2011 elections. The gains could come for the opposition willy-nilly. If the PDP-dominated Senate and the House dropped the bid, that would not erase their portrayal as greedy lots who had to jettison the idea as a result of public outcry, and if they go on with the bid, the description of self-centeredness would stick. But besides the argument that an issue such as making lawmakers members of NEC should have been left for parties to decide, other arguments raised by the opposition would stand on quicksand.

There is no guarantee that if a free and fair election is conducted, the PDP would amass 86 members in the Senate and nearly 260 in the House of Representatives. The underlying question that breds the issue of NEC membership is the need for conti