Opposition lawmakers in the House of Representatives on Tuesday walked out of the Green Chamber in protest against the new clause in the Electoral Act adopted by the lower chamber of the National Assembly.
The opposition lawmakers, led by Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda, rejected the new clause, describing it as anti-people.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday, agreed to provide for both real-time electronic transmission and manual transmission of election results.
This followed a fierce debate on the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2025 ahead of the 2027 elections.
This, however, did not sit well with the opposition lawmakers who accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of manipulating the process and imposing manual transmission on Nigerians.
The lawmakers, led by Chinda, angrily stormed out of the plenary session shouting “APC ole, APC ole.”
It should be noted that “Ole” is a Yoruba word for thief.
After staging a walkout, the minority rep members stormed the House of Representatives Media Centre.
Addressing newsmen at the media centre, Chinda said the minority lawmakers could not support any provision that, in their view, opens the door to manipulation of election results.
“Our position is that elections shall and should be transmitted electronically,” he declared. “We are against any clause that would give room for micro-manipulation, rigging, or leeway for any untoward act.”
He disclosed that their position was that if there is any conflict between the manually collated Form EC8A results and electronically transmitted results, the electronically transmitted version should prevail, but the House rejected their views.
“Those positions were torn down,” he said. “And we are aware that they were torn down by members of the APC, not on grounds of patriotism, but on grounds of political party affiliation.”
On the walkout staged by the opposition lawmakers, Chinda explained that it was a deliberate move to formally register their objection before Nigerians.
“For us, after what happened on the floor, we felt it was better to register our position with Nigeria, which is the court of public opinion. So we had to leave the plenary. We had to walk out to address you,” he stated.
On the passage of Clause 84, which deals with primary elections and the method of candidate selection by political parties, Chinda insisted that the position of the minority caucus is that the choice of how to choose candidates should remain strictly an internal affair of political parties.
“Our position remains that the method of selection of candidates should be an internal party affair. Political parties should be allowed to determine what method they want to adopt in selecting candidates that will represent them,” he said.
He argued that imposing a particular mode of primaries would amount to undue interference in party administration.
“We support that parties should be allowed to adopt the method best suited for them direct primaries, indirect primaries, or consensus primaries,” he added.
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