Electoral Bill 2020 To Empower INEC On Use Of Card Reader

The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Political Parties Matters, Rep Aishatu Dukku, has said that the 2020 Electoral Bill, if passed, would further empower the commission.
She said that INEC would now be validly empowered by law to use card reader and other technologies to conduct elections.
Dukku, who sponsored the bill, spoke while briefing newsmen, yesterday, in Abuja.
She said that card reader would be used for accreditation while other appropriate technologies would be used to transmit results.
The lawmaker said that it was expedient to amend the electoral law in other to deepen the nation’s democracy, adding that the bill would also help to regulate the federal, state and local government polls.
According to her, the amendment has become necessary because of the flaws observed in the nation’s elections, noting that there are some lacunas in the current law that needed to be amended.
“A case in point is when a candidate dies when the election is almost concluded like it happened in Kogi governorship election in 2016,” she said.
Recall that the Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Abubakar Audu, died while the election result was about to be announced.
Dukku said that the Senate, House of Representatives, the judiciary and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) were on the same page with the new electoral bill.
She said this was to forestall a repeat of what happened during the Eighth National Assembly (NASS) when President Muhammadu Buhari refused to give his assent to the electoral bill.
She said that the current NASS was poised to produce a clean copy of electoral bill, adding that after the second reading, the bill would be subjected to public hearing for Nigerians to have input.
Dukku said that the public would be carried along to reduce the time spent on working on the bill.
She said that the 2020 electoral bill stipulated a maximum of N5billion that could be spent by a presidential candidate and N1billion by a governorship candidate.
Also, N100million and N70million for senatorial and House of Representatives candidates respectively.
Dukku said N30million was the limit to be spent by a chairmanship candidate and N5million by a councillorship candidate.