 The Senate has approved all options for the conduct of party primaries and these include the direct, indirect and consensus primaries. This is against its earliest stand on direct primary only for choosing of candidates vying for electoral offices. The direct primary clause had earlier hindered the assent to the bill by President Mohamed Abu-Hari. At the resumption of its session, the Senate leader, Sen. Tayyaya Abubaka, Kevin North, raised the motion for a recommittal to the committee of the whole. Senator, to the cause that the President and Commander-in-Chief are sitting by, they would hold him of his assent to the Electoral Act No. 6, 2010 repeal and the Enegagement Bill 2031, which was passed by the National Assembly and forwarded to the President on the 18th of November, 2021. Senate knows that the rationale for withholding the assent borders on his observation on clause 84 of that bill. Desirous of the need to address the observation by Mr. President and Commander-in-Chief, a necessary amendment in accordance with order 87C of Senate Standing Orders 2020-22 as amended and in order to secure this very important plank, vital plank of our legislative agenda, and relying also on order 1B and order 5826 of the Senate Standing Order 2030-22 as amended. The Senate, according to the law, to rescind its decision on the effective clause and to recommit the Senate to the committee of the whole for reconsideration. On his part, the Senate President, Admiral Awan, assured that the amendment to the controversial clause was to allow Nigerians exercise their franchise without being hindered. What we have done today is to respond to the observations of Mr. President and the calls by our constituents and other stakeholders on the need for us to expedite action on addressing those observations made by Mr. President. And we have done that very, very patriotically. Today, as the bill stands, there is provision for all possible options for selection of candidates from the presidency to the council. The available options we have, one, the direct primaries, two, the indirect primaries, three, the consensus, candidature. What this means is political parties are now, once this becomes law, are now challenged to ensure that they choose what is appropriate, what is suitable for them when it comes to the processes of producing their candidates. I will urge that we should practice all these three so that we are able to do one of them. However, against the perception that the parliament was cowed into taking President Buhari's proposal, the House, through its spokesman Benjamin Carlo, insisted that the House acted to save democracy, noting that beside the controversial clause, there are so many other benefits as far as electoral reforms were concerned inherent in the bill. He explained further that, quote, we did not jettison direct primary, we only made it an option. Political parties are left with whichever options they prefer according to their realities. There are so many other benefits in the bill. Considered position that the political parties should be allowed to freely exercise right of choice in deciding which of one direct or two indirect primaries to adopt and the conduct of their primary election as their respective realities may permit. This was specifically the letter that came from Mr. President, asking us to return what we used to have which was primarily should be conducted direct through direct or because of this specific mention of a specific clause, the House ruled in order 12, rule 20, 21, 22, 23 says that when a bill is returned back to the House of Representatives, that by the President, because he withdrew his ass, we have the option of resigning our former decision and working on only this specific clause. So today, gentlemen of the press and fellow Nigerians, we worked on what Mr. President proposed and we accepted that it will be good for democracy at the moment to allow the electoral act be passed, the electoral act amendment bill to be passed into law by adjusting our former position and allowing the direct or indirect primaries to go through. 13 civil society groups have rejected the introduction of consensus as a mode for the nomination of candidates seeking election into public offices in the electoral act amendment bill. The groups faltered the action of the Senate in a statement jointly signed hours after the lawmakers modified the proposed amendment to the electoral act. They claimed the consensus mode is antithetical to democratic principles and will result in the subversion of popular will, adding that it violates the rights of aspirants to equal participation in party primaries while limiting the choice of voters to candidates who did not emerge from democratic primary elections. Yaga Africa International Press Center, Center for Citizens with Disabilities, the Albino Foundation, Clean Foundation are among the 13 groups rejecting the Senate's decision. We are now joined by public affairs analyst Mr. Shagun Shopiton. Good evening, Mr. Shopiton. Good evening, Mariam. Well thanks for joining us. What do you make of the U-turn by both chambers of the National Assembly on this matter? Sorry, I didn't hear that. What do you make of the U-turn by the Senate on this? Both chambers? Oh yes. Well, I think on the one hand, I generally tend to like the idea of the direct primaries. I think that the intention of including that clause was to, if you like, deliver Nigeria and the Nigeria political space from the Godfatherism factor in our leadership selection process. We all know what happens during primaries when the when the truth is indirecting. So it's usually the highest bidder. It's usually a case of the highest bidder. A lot of money gets thrown around amongst the delegates at the conventions. The jamboree, it's very, very embarrassing. So on the face of it, the direct primaries would have been fantastic. However, there are problems. And I think that those problems are the things that the president identified and that has now made the Senate to reluctantly make this U-turn. So the first problem is, those political parties, very few of them have a verifiable voter register. If you don't have a voter register, then how do you conduct direct primaries? How can INEC supervise and actually ensure and guarantee that the outcome of those direct primaries is a reflection of the will of the entirety of the membership of that political party? So if we're to go by the way of direct primaries, the first thing would be for INEC to compare the political parties to clean up their voter register, their member register, if you like. And that process is going to take time, it's going to cost money, all of that. So on the face of it, I like the idea of direct primaries, but I don't think it's practicable at this moment. That's one. And secondly, I also think that because we're in a democracy, and democracy is about choice, sometimes it's anti-democratic to using legislation and fear to force certain provisions on the polity. And I think that this law was, this act was pending in that direction. If you ask me, I probably would have preferred that yes, even though it's a bit anti-democratic, let's enforce the direct primaries. And it would have been fantastic to see for a change, the Senate actually calling the bluff of the president and applying their power of veto. But we all knew that was never going to happen anyway. This Senate has never been known to stand up to the president for obvious reasons. So their U-turn didn't come as a surprise. We all saw it coming. In the overall, I think it's in the best interest of Nigeria that they did make their U-turn because the alternative would have been for us to somehow find ourselves in a controversy and then we lose all of the benefits that are contained in that act in its entirety. Okay, so what does this spell for political parties once the president gives this bill, the assent? Sorry, say that again. What does this spell for the political parties once the president ascends to the spell? Oh, well, so what this means for the political parties is that sadly, sadly, it's business as usual. It means that APC can now do a convention, refuse to even vote at all, whether direct or indirect, and claim that if by consensus adopted a particular candidate for presidency or for governorship of a particular state or for local government or whatever. So it's just business as usual in terms of how they select, you know, how they give the party ticket to candidates. It's business as usual. Yeah, the thing now is that we need to have it quickly passed by the president, right? Yeah. That's the quick passage of this bill into law by the president because even INEC is waiting for the bill to be signed before it can release its timetable. So this is crucial for the preparation for the next elections. You know, there's been a lot of conspiracy theories about why the president does not want to sign. People have expressed fears that this is just gamesmanship on the part of the president and his advisors and his party with the intention of pushing us to the point where he can now refuse to ascend based on that age-old argument of the Equals Treaty or the Equals Law that forbids a new law being passed I think six months before the next election. You know, so those fears are still there and I think that what we should see is let the Senate very quickly amend this bill like they've listed it now. So let's hope that they can get this done and over with in a matter of a week and push this thing back to the president so that the president can ascend and so that INEC can get to work to release their schedule program towards the 2023 elections and the other elections, let's not forget that there are some off-cycle elections that will come up later this year. So I think it's absolutely critical that the National Assembly gets this done and over with as quickly as possible, get it to the president's table if possible before the end of January. Today is the 19th of January, still possible so that the president can then you know sign. Once that happens then he has 30 days again so if you get it to him before the end of January then it's got till the end of February to sign and then you know we'll know where we are so if he refuses to sign again then we'll know that okay this guy is up to no good and then the public opinion and pressure can be put upon the National Assembly to veto him because I think that it's absolutely critical that the next set of elections and the 2023 general elections are not run under the old law. All right, finally before you go what do you make of this call by some civil rights groups against consensus candidacy? Well yeah I mean I agree with them you know the consensus candidacy thing is is anything but democracy you know it leaves room for how do you even determine what consensus is you know for me I think it's ridiculous that you want to run elections for 200 million people 200 million people right and then to physically sit down in the sitting room of one guy with maybe 10 people sitting around the table with him and then they decide who is going to who they are going to give a party ticket to and because they call the shots in that party they claim that it is consensus and nobody else can really stop them you know so it's not really good and I think that yes the civil society groups are right you know rejecting the inclusion of that consensus option but I don't think that the Senate is going to back down on that I think we're going to get that provision including the new act what we now need to do as members of civil society and as citizens is to put pressure on the political parties and say we do not want consensus candidacies you know and I know that people will say oh what does put pressure mean how do you even do that well there are ways there are ways you know public opinion is very very strong if you push it hard enough unfortunately a lot of times Nigerians the Nigerian society Nigerians the youth who are a huge number of people you know we don't exercise these powers consistently enough and with enough um um uh cohesion to to to to um to take full advantage of the power that we have all right if we do that then we can reject the consensus issue whether it's in the law or not all right thank you mr shango shabito for your time thank you for having