Former Senator who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th Senate between 2015 and 2019, Shehu Sani has stated that the National Assembly has created three electoral bodies, which is INEC, NCC and themselves by its rejection of the electronic transmission of election results.
This statement was made by the former senator when he featured in a radio current affairs programme in Osogbo on Friday.
Expressing his disappointment at the turn of events, the former senator noted that it was sad, unfortunate and tragic that the national assembly can be so divided on a very important issue.
According to him, “The national assembly is made up of politicians and elected public officials. It is wrong for us to have a law where they would be involved in deciding or approving whether election results should be released or not.
“All they have done simply is that the ruling political party with dominance in the national assembly will decide whether results should be electronically announced or not.
“Another point we need to observe is that during elections, most of the lawmakers are back to their constituencies and it is not possible at that time to have a quorum in the national assembly for the purpose of approving whether election results.
“All they are trying to do is simply to give the ruling party the opportunity to decide whether the result of election is released or not.
“It is better the country does not operate electronic transfer of results than where the NCC headed by the appointee of the President and the national assembly headed by a politician from the ruling party dominating both chambers to decide the processes of an election. It is very wrong to have such a type.”
On the matter of inadequate data coverage in some parts of the country, Sani declared that the legislators were deceiving themselves adding that by objecting to electronic transmission of election results meant that if they were losing, they would find a way of manipulating the results.
He explained that since the announcement of election results is key, it is one of the problems in previous elections.
“You can have credible elections but the person announcing the results can be compromised but when you have a system where results are automatically transmitted electronically, it is not going to be subject to anybody’s manipulation and like I have said, people need to know this very well that during elections, there is nobody in the national assembly, everyone would have left and won’t come back until after election.
“Will you now say the national assembly should be in the chamber until the election results are sent to them to confirm. What kind of laws are these people making for our country?”
