The Nigeria Governor’s Forum has praised the Senate for the recent Electoral Bill re-amendment at a meeting in Abuja, on Wednesday.
It was earlier reported that the contentious clause in the Electoral Bill is Section 84 (2), which prescribes the manner political parties are to choose their party flagbearers. The Nigerian Senate re-amended the bill to accommodate direct, indirect and consensus candidacy on Tuesday.
The NGF Chairman and Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, who spoke during the Forum’s meeting, urged the House of Representatives to do the same to the clause in the Electoral Bill.
He said, “On the Electoral Act, governors commended the Senate for accelerating the removal of the contentious clause in the draft Electoral Bill. We hope that the second chamber, the House of Representatives, will also follow suit so that the revised electoral bill can be returned to Mr President. This will enable various institutions, particularly INEC, to proceed with its responsibility concerning various elections in 2022 and 2023.”
Fayemi also stated that the Forum also engaged issues surrounding the petroleum subsidy, COVID-19, nutrition, national security, and ease of doing business. He noted that the governors intend to intervene on all of these issues with all stakeholders in order to achieve positive outcomes.
“The Forum also discussed the issue around the petroleum subsidy and concluded to engage the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress on how best to address this issue without causing any disaffection, with a view to salvaging the economy for the Nigerian people at the end of the day. So, we shall be engaging the NLC as sub-nationals with a view to ensuring that the outcome of our engagements will also be fed into the national discourse.
“We also discussed the health update particularly to COVID-19 infection and expressed happiness that the current Omicron variant had been declining progressively. However, we also noted that there is a need for states to ramp up the COVID-19 vaccination exercise,” he stated.
