A Durable Republic?

On Monday, 20 December 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari formally declined assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 which had been passed by both chambers of the National Assembly a few weeks earlier. The Bill sought to amend Section 87 of the Electoral Act, 2010. In the period between the passage of the Bill by the National Assembly and the President's decision, there was a debate in the country about what the President's refusal would signal about the fate of electoral democracy in Nigeria. When they threatened to override the President's veto, if he exercised it, the leadership of both legislative institutions were lauded by leading critical voices in the political and civil societies (Baiyewu, et al. 2021). Therefore, when the President eventually declined assent to the Bill, apart from the state governors who strongly urged the President not to sign it, most interest groups condemned his decision.

The main point of contention in the Bill was the provision that political parties must select their candidates through direct primaries. For most of the Fourth Republic, political parties have used either indirect primaries or consensus (which is often a metaphor for the imposition of candidates by party leaders) in choosing candidates. Indirect primaries are highly susceptible to manipulation and corruption. They have become the most potent way for some party leaders to impose their candidates, even if such flagbearers are not popular among the generality of the party members. Therefore, mandating direct primaries, as the Bill did, was a way of not only ensuring that the most popular candidates won the party tickets, it was also crucial to broadening the direct engagement of party members in the internal democratic process.

In rejecting this provision – while requesting the National Assembly to drop it from the new electoral bill – President Buhari claimed that ‘the nomination of party candidates solely via direct primaries as envisaged by the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 has serious adverse legal, financial, economic and security consequences which cannot be accommodated at the moment considering our Nation's peculiarities’. He added: ‘It also has implications on [sic.] the rights of citizens to participate in the government as constitutionally ensured’ (Premium Times 2021). The other reasons provided by Buhari, were judged by the media to be specious.