Electoral Act: ‘Lawmaking Not Eating Amala,’ Senate Spokesman Defends Bill Amid Backlash

The Senate has defended the amendments to the Electoral Act, saying the lawmakers painstakingly worked for the best interest of Nigerians.

“Anyone who loves Nigeria will know that what we have done today is the best for Nigeria,” the spokesman of the Senate, Yemi Adaramodu, said on Tuesday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“We don’t play to the gallery. Then the minor minority that are so melodramatic about it, we don’t look at them to make laws because principles of lawmaking are not just something like eating amala,” the Ekiti South senator said.

The Senate on Tuesday amended the Electoral Act, allowing for the electronic transmission of results, but made provision for technical issues that may arise in the course of elections.

That decision was a reversal of the lawmakers’ earlier stance, in which the Senate rejected the compulsory electronic transmission of results from polling units to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IREV).

The move generated backlash from critics, civil societies, and opposition leaders.

But on Tuesday, during an emergency plenary, the upper chamber approved electronic transmission (without the real-time phrase) as part of the electoral process.

READ ALSO: Senate Reverses Stance To Allow E-Transmission Of Election Results, Retains Manual Backup

In case of internet connectivity failure, the lawmakers said the Form EC8A will remain the primary instrument for result collation.

Adaramodu defended the move, saying it was a thorough job by the lawmakers.

“We don’t do something that we just wake up just on impulse and just say something, and then you say you have made a law. You have to be very thorough. You have to be very painstaking,” the spokesman added.

“It must be so painstakingly done that the flaws must not be so latent to the extent that it can repudiate whatever good trust that Nigerians will have in our system,” he said.

“So that is why it is not something that we just sleep and just wake up one day and say that we have made laws.”

He said the “shades of opinions about the bill is an indication that Nigeria’s democracy is thriving.

Senator Adaramodu said, “like we know in Nigeria, and everywhere else where democracy is thriving —and we want democracy to thrive — there will be shades of opinions.

“There will be shadows of ideas, and then we have to listen to all. So that is what happened.”