The hope of most Nigerians for a fundamental electoral reform may be dashed if the recommendation of the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee on constitution review on the appointment of the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is adopted by the House.
The 44-member committee headed by Deputy Speaker, Hon. Usman Nafada, concluded its technical session a week ago in Kaduna and it is likely to submit its report to the House before the end of the month.
One fundamental position of the ad-hoc committee is the rejection of the Uwais panel recommendation that the National Judicial Council (NJC) should sort out three names from the applicants seeking to be members of the Electoral Commission and recommend same to the Council of State, which will in turn nominate one to the Senate for confirmation as INEC chairman.
Our correspondents reliably gathered that the ad-hoc committee recommended that the status quo, where members of the Electoral Commission are appointed by the President, should remain.
Most stakeholders, including the Chief Ayo Opadokun-led Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reform (CODER), canvassed at several fora for the adoption of key recommendations of the Uwais panel report by the National Assembly especially empowering NJC, to sort out three nominees for INEC chairmanship position.
CODER believes that empowering NJC to have a say in who becomes INEC chairman will go a long way in engendering free and fair elections in the country.
The House committee, however, expunged INEC from Section 153 of the Constitution (Establishment of other Executive Bodies) and created a new section for the electoral commission, which would invariably put the electoral body on first line charge to ensure its independence.
The committee also recommended the removal of conditions spelt out in Section 106 of the constitution as a pre-condition for choosing INEC commissioners, saying it means that the commissioners, who are supposed to be apolitical, are required to be card-carrying members of a political party
