The President may have just received the 2011 electoral Bill this morning a source close to the presidency has disclosed. The bill which was passed last week by the National Assembly was supposed to have been forwarded to the President to be signed into law but the bureaucracy at the National Assembly might have delayed the onward transmission of the bill.
However Independent National Electoral Commission chairman has declared that uncertainty over the legal framework for Nigeria's upcoming elections is delaying efforts to overhaul the voter register and ensure credible polls, the head of the country's electoral commission. He said this today while playing host to political party leaders in Abuja.
Both houses of parliament last month approved an amendment to the constitution bringing elections forward to January from April, with the aim of allowing electoral disputes to be settled before the new presidential terms starts in May.
But the amendments, which also gave more time for the finalisation of voter lists, have since been the subject of controversy, with questions over whether President Goodluck Jonathan has to approve the changes before they can take effect.
"The uncertainties about the legal framework for the conduct of the elections have hindered our preparations," Attahiru Jega, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), told a meeting with political party leaders.
"The commission has planned its activities on the understanding these amendments have been consummated and finalised. Instead, there have been controversies over whether the president has to assent to the constitutional amendments."
Until the situation is resolved, INEC would be unable to release a definitive election timetable, he said.
He said the commission was already two weeks behind on its own internal timetable for compiling a new voters' register, vital if Africa's most populous nation is to avoid a repeat of shambolic 2007 elections, although it was striving to catch up.
An electoral roll riddled with fictitious names, combined with voter intimidation and ballot-stuffing, meant observers deemed the 2007 vote not to have been credible.
Jega said INEC's review of the electoral roll at 100 polling units had thrown up so many problems that a fresh list needed to be compiled, if the time and funds were available, otherwise the existing register would at least need "cleaning up".
"What we found were massive inadequacies including underage registrants, hundreds of blank or blurred photographs and multiple registrations by the same persons," he said.
Parliament last week approved an 88 billion naira budget for INEC, much of it for electronic voter registration machines and equipment to issue new voter cards.
Jega said there was also uncertainty over that funding.
If the constitutional amendments are upheld, Nigeria's elections should take place between December 30 and January 29. If they are overturned, the country could revert to its initial timetable of elections in April.
"Our position remains that we are bound by whatever existing legal architecture is provided to us and we need not be drawn into controversies over such issues," Jega said, appealing for a "speedy conclusion" to the uncertainty.



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