By Gabriel Okoro, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) caucus in the House of Representatives has advised the National Assembly to perfect the document of the electoral act amendment bill and send it back for president Muhammadu Buhari’s assent rather than calling for vetoing.
The caucus led by the House leader, Femi Gbajabiamila gave the advice while fielding answers to newsmen shortly after it met on Wednesday at the National Assembly, Abuja.
According to Mr. Gbajabiamila, “A dot or punctuation can change the meaning of a provision in the law. Just a single coma can change the meaning and make it ambiguous.”
He said, “As a party we are not going to be part of those to override the president’s document”.
Explaining earlier, the House leader said “If the document is imperfect and you can read it anyhow or if count was removed when it should have been there, you can not even override that imperfect document. You have to first of all amend that document and start the process all over again and send it back to Mr. President.
“Mr. President has done well. If you study the constitution very well, it does not oblige the president to give any reason for veto. All he has to do is return it and say am not signing. He doesn’t have to give you any reason. But every time he has done that , he has brought forward cogent verifiable reasons why he is not signing.
“On this particular one, I believe why the president has refused to sign which we identify with is that every vote must count in Nigeria”, said Gbajabiamila.
The lawmaker said the effect of the electoral act amendment bill is that it can only accredit voters through the electronic system adding that it prevent manual registration.
“What the president has done is to protect everybody in Nigeria. Yes, do your electronic registration but make room for manual else millions will be disenfranchised and we don’t want that. It is a constitution guarantee that everybody that reside in Nigeria has the right to vote and be voted for. So we can’t breach the constitution through an amendment”, the House leader said.
Speaking further on the controversial Trader Moni the federal government embarked on as the 2019 general elections beckons, Mr. Gbajabiamila reiterated that it is not vote buying as claimed by the opposition.
“Am shocked that legislature will say that Trader Moni is vote buying when it is the same legislature that gave the approval for the budget. You budget for something and then you turned around. It means that you have done disservice to the country. You are indicting yourself”,he said.