The Independent National Electoral Commission may be unveiling fresh dates for elections next month in enforcement of a Federal High Court decision which nullified the initial sequence stated in the Electoral Act, NEXT has been informed.
According to the current dates released by INEC late last year, the National Assembly elections are expected to hold April 2, followed by the presidential elections, April 9, and then governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections, April 16, 2011.
The dates are based on the recently introduced section 25 of the Electoral Act, which provides that federal legislature elections come first, followed by the presidential elections, and then the governorship and the State Assembly elections.
However, opposition parties had criticised the order, challenging the powers of the National Assembly to determine voting sequence, and arguing that early presidential polls could set in a domino effect, with most candidates and voters subsequently moving to align with the elected president’s party.
The Federal High Court, Abuja, gave fillip to that argument March 3, upholding a Labour Party suit on the matter and invalidating section 25 of the Electoral Act on the premise that constitutionally, only INEC, not the National Assembly, has the power to decide on election timetable.
INEC is now considering a review of the dates, about two weeks after the ruling, and barely two weeks to the elections in April, spokesperson for the chairman of the electoral commission, Kayode Idowu, said yesterday.
“The commission is meeting on that. It is the commission’s decision and I cannot pre-empt that. The decision would be taken by the commission; not even the chairman alone,” Mr. Idowu said.
He said on account of the “limp” section of the law now, the commission is gearing to reach a decision on whether or not to change the dates for the polls, and if so, when best the new dates could be released for an approaching election that is already besieged by several troubles.
By Tuesday, it was still unclear how the commission is dealing with a key challenge over the production of ballot papers for the elections, which NEXT reported over a week ago to be facing printing difficulties with the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc constrained to meet the April deadline.
The commission was considering the option of contracting foreign printers as it races to meet deadlines, sources hinted.
But Mr. Idowu repeated an earlier position yesterday, that there were no problems in the procurement of the materials, saying the commission seeming silence on the issue borders on the sensitivity of the document.
“When an examinations body wants to print question papers, do they announce publicly that we want to print and this is the printer?” he asked.