2019: Senate Passes STRINGENT Electoral Act Into Law... SEE FULL DETAILS
* Card Reader technology to be fully implemented henceforth
* House of Reps aspirants to pay
N1,000,000.00
* State Assembly aspirants to pay 500,000,00
1. There shall now be full biometric accreditation
of voters with Smart Card Readers and/or other
technological devices, as INEC may introduce for
elections from time to time.
2. Presiding Officers must now instantly transmit
accreditation data and results from Polling Units to
various collation centers. Presiding officer who
contravene this shall be imprisoned for at least 5
years (no option of fine).
3. All Presiding Officer must now first record accreditation data and polling results on INEC’s
prescribed forms before transmitting them. The
data/result recorded must be the same with what they transmitted.
4. INEC now has unfettered powers to conduct elections by electronic voting.
5. Besides manual registers, INEC is now mandated to keep Electronic registers of voters.
6. INEC is now mandated to publish voters’ registers on its official website(s) for public
scrutiny at least 30 days before a general election
and any INEC staff who is responsible for this but
fails to act as prescribed shall be liable on conviction to 6 months’ imprisonment.
7. INEC is now mandated to keep a National Electronic Register of Election Results as a distinct
database or repository of polling unit by polling unit results for all elections conducted by INEC.
8. Collation of election result is now mainly electronic, as transmitted unit results will help to determine final results on real time basis.
9. INEC is now mandated to record details of electoral materials – quantities, serial numbers used to conduct elections (for proper tracking).
10. A political party whose candidate dies after
commencement of an election and before the declaration of the result of that election now has a
14-day window to conduct a fresh primary inorder for INEC to conduct a fresh election within
21 days of the death of the party’s candidate;
11. Political parties’ Polling Agents are now entitled to inspect originals of electoral materials before commencement of election and any Presiding Officer who violates this provision of the
law shall be imprisoned for at least1 year.
12. No political party can impose qualification/
disqualification criteria, measures or conditions on
any Nigerian for the purpose of nomination for
elective offices, except as provided in the 1999
Constitution.
13. The election of a winner of an election can no
longer be challenged on grounds of qualification, if the he (winner) satisfied the applicable
requirements of sections 65, 106,
131 or 177 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and he is
not, as may be applicable, in breach of sections
66, 107, 137 or 182 of the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. [For example, a
person’s election cannot be challenged on the
ground that he did not pay tax, as this is not a
qualifying condition under the Constitution.]
14. All members of political parties are now
eligible to determine the ad-hoc delegates to elect candidates of parties in indirect primaries. The
capacity of party executives to unduly influence or rig party primaries has been reasonably curtailed, if not totally removed.
15. Parties can no longer impose arbitrary nomination fees on political aspirants. The Bill
passed prescribes limits for each elective office as
follows:
(a) One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira
(N150,000) for a Ward Councillorship aspirant in
the FCT;
(b) Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira
(N250,000) for an Area Council Chairmanship aspirant in the FCT;
(c) Five Hundred Thousand Naira (N500,000) for a
House of Assembly aspirant;
(d) One Million Naira (N1,000,000) for a House of
Representatives aspirant;
(e) Two Million Naira (N2,000,000) for a Senatorial
aspirant;
(f) Five Million naira (N5,000,000) for a
Governorship aspirant; and
(g) Ten Million Naira (N10,000,000) for a
Presidential aspirant.
16. Relying on the powers of the National Assembly in Paragraph 11 of Part II (Concurrent
Legislative List) of the Second Schedule
(Legislative Powers) to the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended),
the Senate also passed measures reforming
procedures regulating Local Government Elections.
State Independent Electoral Commissions can no
longer conduct elections that do not meet
minimum standards of credibility.
17. Any INEC official who disobeys a tribunal order
for inspection of electoral materials shall be
imprisoned for 2 years!
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