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| President Muhammadu Buhari |
Former Chief Whip of the Nigerian Senate, Sir Roland Owie has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for declining to sign the amended Electoral Act that mandates political parties to conduct direct primary election in picking their candidates for elective positions.
Reacting to development yesterday in Benin City, Owie told Saturday Vanguard that primary election is an internal affair of political parties and should be allowed to remain that way adding that political parties could devise different ways of picking their candidates that would be acceptable members of the party.
He said: “I support President Muhammadu Buhari for not signing the new electoral bill because it negates party democracy. You can’t direct a political party on how it should choose its candidates, it is an internal affair of the political parties and besides, it will be very expensive and with the situation of security in the country today, direct primary will be a disaster if it is implemented.
“Electronic transmission of results is okay but political parties should be allowed to conduct their primaries and conduct their affairs, the government should not dictate to them how they should do their primary election. Please leave the political parties to organise themselves. I congratulate President Buhari for not signing that bill.
He said that under the Ibrahim Babangida junta when direct primary election (Option A4) was decreed and imposed on the two political parties that existed then, billions of naira were spent by the Federal Government to prosecute the series of direct primary elections.
