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Nigerian professor of political economy and public policy advocate Pat Utomi has criticised President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly for the recent amendment to the Electoral Act.
Tinubu signed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill into law on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after it was passed by the National Assembly. This move has sparked a discourse and drawn criticism from many Nigerians and civil society organisations (CSOs) for acting against Nigerians’ interests.
Utomi, in a post shared on X on Friday morning, described it as a gangster style assault on the popular will.
“This gangster style assault on the popular will by the Senate and Executive must not be brushed off. It is treason,” Utomi’s post read in part.
Utomi is one of many analysts who have expressed disappointment with the National Assembly and Tinubu for signing the amended Electoral Act into law.
Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, a former Director of Voter Education at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), warned in an interview with Arise TV that the law could repeat past electoral problems and undermine transparency.
“Without sounding like a prophet of doom, we’ll be haunted by the ghosts of the past with the passage of the Electoral Act, as there hasn’t been any significant change.If we say transmission fails and allow the primary evidence of voting and candidate scores to be the manual form EC-8A, this will become the norm. Presiding officers may be compelled to claim there’s no network and ask collation officers to use the manual form,” said Osaze-Uzzi.
Many advocates and activists gathered in front of the National Assembly this week to demand that the law require the real-time electronic transmission of election results from polling units, rather than allowing manual collation as a fallback.
