 Vakaduna State Government has directed all political appointees and public servants aspiring for political offices in the 2023 general elections to resign on or before March 31st of 2022. This directive is contained in a statement issued by the Secretary to the State Government, Balarabe Abbas, who confirmed that the directive is in conformity with the 2022 electoral act recently signed by President Mohammad Abu Hari. The 2022 electoral act specifies that such officers should resign from office 30 days before the party primaries for the post for which they are aspiring. Well, we are now being joined by Mr. Johnson Argo, a legal practitioner. You are welcome to the news. Thank you, Maureen. Well, section 84, subsection 12 of the amended electoral act has been so controversial. Do you think that there are some vested interests in this? Of course, politics is a game of interest. A lot of people want to have what they prefer on the ground. Why they prefer what they prefer? Most of the times are best known to them, even though we prefer that the reason why they prefer whatever they prefer should be in the interest of the general public. Well, even after signing the bill, the President has categorically inserted the National Assembly to delete it. How constitutional is this? No, the President cannot dictate. He can't suggest. But the National Assembly has to make laws in the best interest of the nation. Well, this very section that is requiring them to, well, asking a certain section of the people to resign 30 days before indicating interest, you know, that's if they have interest to run. How democratic would you say it is? I think it is. If you look at the constitution, it has already provided that public officers or public servants should resign 30 days before the election they want to participate in. If you want to participate as a Senate or as a House of Representatives member, as a President, as a Governor, as a House of Assembly member, you have to resign. Assuming you are a public officer or public servant, various sections of the constitution make this provision. So it's already there that you have to resign. What this new electoral act amendment has just done is to expand it from just being public servants to political appointees. So political appointees are people of my public officers are supposed to public servants. Now, there's nothing overly wrong with it. We might say it restricts political participation, where it forces somebody who thinks he wants to participate in a political position to resign ahead of time. It's probably, we can say it's a legislative ad hominem, targeted at a particular group of people. You might say so, but I think it's something in the interest of democracy because it creates a level playing ground. Everybody is, let me say, nobody's afraid that a political office occupier like the Governor can determine the outcome of electoral primaries. Well, for example, our experience now is that Governors determine who the candidates are. How do they do that? They overload the political appointive positions. They can have as much as 1000 appointees and start to trailing, quote, in most parties. They have, they become delegates for primaries. So whoever the Governor dictates should be the candidate of any particular position, the delegates will vote for that person. That doesn't make for free and fair elections. In fact, that system already means a rigged system. I, or any person who is ordinary, who does not want to pay homage to a political elected executive, we definitely do not have a chance to win primaries. You know, I'm still thinking, this asking people to resign 30 days, isn't it such a high risk? And isn't it one of the reasons why politics sometimes appears to be like a do or die a first thing? Because they seem to drop everything in there and so they must get it at all means. It's like there is no option. That risk is there, but I think it's a lesser risk. It's less of the two evils. When you have, when you're faced with the devil and probably deep you see, you choose what you want to do. Do you want to drown? Do you want to meet the devil? Do you have a chance at winning the devil? What if you escape altogether? How can you escape? So I think that is the option Nigeria has checked. By restricting this participation, we are telling people if you want to eat, drink phanta, drink phanta, if you want to drink, drink, drink, don't miss it too. Although we don't call brand names because they've not paid for ad, but we get what you're trying to say. Now has this been abused in the past by politicians, this particular clause? Of course. Because as you've rightly indicated, it's not new, it's just been broadened. Has it been abused in the past? Can we have instances if possible? There have been instances where appointees were expected or let me say office holders, but civil servants mainly, were not able to resign before time and it became litigous, but it wasn't that notable. And in the present instance, they have been told you cannot use office resources to beef up your chances because if you remain in office close to the electoral time, there are risks that you can offer patronages as make promises on the basis of public covers, public posts to people for them to vote. You probably influence the outcome of election because of the picks of office you can offer. So by removing that from view, you have been made as normal as any other contestant. And that's what I call equality. Equality is very key in any democracy. If you want democracy to really be what it should be, people being free to choose for themselves who should lead them, there should be equality. And that is what I think this provision has engendered. Mr. Johnson, I think this is a good place to stop this conversation. Thank you so much for your time and insight. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.