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Implications of the proposed changes to the Electoral Act 14 Mar 2018

There has been a lot of controversy in Nigeria surrounding the proposed change in the sequence of the general elections by the National Assembly. As if to end the debate, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mamood Yakubu, on February 28th, announced the timetable for Nigerian general elections for 2019 through to 2055. The timetable asserts the current arrangement of conducting the general elections over two Saturdays, whereas the proposal of the National Assembly is for the elections to hold over three consecutive Saturdays.
     
The proposed amendments to the Electoral Act 2010, if eventually signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, will make some consequential changes to the Act, which would be immediately felt in reordering the forthcoming 2019 elections. Much of the discussion of the backlashes to the proposed amendments to the Act have been focused on the political and legal ramifications of upsetting the electoral sequence that has been in place since 2007.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs, Abu Ibrahim, one of ten lawmakers who have opposed the new changes in the upper house, said reordering the sequence of the 2019 elections is illegal. In making this assertion, Senator Ibrahim cited a 2003 suit instituted by the INEC, in which the Federal High Court invalidated a law passed by the National Assembly to hold all national elections in one day.

President Olusegun Obasanjo had refused to sign the Bill that was passed by lawmakers, who then overruled the President by a legislative veto. Senator Ibrahim was at pains to emphasise the point that since the Supreme Court has not made any pronouncements on the issue, the High Court’s judgement that nobody can interfere with the functions of INEC, in terms of fixing dates of elections, is still subsisting.

The current amendments to the Electoral Act 2010 propose that elections for the National Assembly (i.e. Senate and the House of Representatives) will take place first, followed by elections into the state houses of assembly, and gubernatorial elections. The presidential election is to take place last. This essentially spreads the general elections over three consecutive Saturdays.

Some lawmakers who have supported the Bill, which seeks to amend the Electoral Act, have said that the proposal does not in any way violate any provision of Section 76 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, which empowers INEC to fix dates and conduct elections. In which case, the proposal of the National Assembly affects the sequence, and not dates, of the elections. The proposed amendment to Section 25 of the Electoral Act states that "The dates for these elections shall be as appointed by the Independent National Electoral Commission."

However, the election timetable for 2019, as already released by INEC, puts the presidential and National Assembly elections first, followed by governorship and state assembly elections. According to the timetable, the elections will take place over two Saturdays.

For the federal elections, an important consequence of the proposed amendment, which has been highlighted in the ongoing debate, is that the new sequence would mean the candidates would have to run and win on their own. Unlike in the last three presidential elections, no politician would be under duress to deliver his or her constituency to the president-elect in the 2019 general elections. Also, across the federal and state elections, no one would leverage the success of the winner of the presidential election, since it would come last.

But whatever the principle behind the disarticulation of the influence of the president-elect from other elections, it is not upheld in the sequence of the state elections. The gubernatorial elections and elections into the State Assemblies will hold on the same day. Therefore, the candidates can run “together,” leveraging the influence of one another.

This may be seen to underscore the notion that the proposed amendments by the National Assembly are self-serving. The Senate President Bukola Saraki and House Speaker Yakubu Dogara, both of the All Progressives Congress (APC), are known to have strong disagreement with President Buhari. The return to the electoral order that obtained in 1999 and 2003 would further sever any influence of the President, if re-elected in 2019, over members of the National Assembly. This perhaps would provide an opportunity for as many members of the caucuses of the current leadership of the National Assembly to retain their seats in the upcoming elections, helping Saraki and Dogara to maintain their leverage in the balance of power between the Executive and the Legislature.

But the proposed reordering of the elections could also be argued to provide an opportunity for the electorate in deciding, more independently, who to vote for – which is a win for democracy. A party functionary, who is loyal to Saraki recently told a gathering that “in the earlier elections, there was no need to show loyalty to the President. But when Obasanjo wanted to force Yar’Adua on us, he altered the sequence and since then, whichever party won the presidency was assured of a majority of the vote in the subsequent election races.”

Meanwhile, Senator Abdullahi Adamu (APC Nasarawa West), has provided a strong financial implication for reordering the sequence of the elections. While leading dissent against the proposed amendment, he said, “...it is too costly. [Lawmakers] cannot afford the elections. Look at the amount of money that will be spent. Where will you get that amount of money? What about the timing? It will even expose some of our colleagues to danger. If you have a senator alone, who will contest the election, he must pay his agents, he must pay for security, he must pay for everything. And if he is afraid of his governor, his governor is now free to deal with him. Of course, if he contests together with the president as put by INEC, [during] the presidential election, the security aspect, even the funding will cover him. So, obviously my colleagues have not thought much on this issue.”

Campaign funding is one of the major obstacles in levelling the electoral playing field in Nigeria. Campaign funding is an exclusion factor for a lot of political office aspirants. Many believe it is the sole determinant of success, as it influences every other consideration. As the major financiers of the APC presidential election that brought Buhari to power in 2015 would suggest, access to public funds is a huge leverage in funding campaigns.   

This opens the door for a discussion of the economic impact of the proposal for amending the Electoral Act. Elections increase money supply in the economy. With much of it unconnected to productive activities, the general elections tend to drive the inflation cycle. With the elections likely to spread over three weeks, and the candidates all having to spend more for their individual campaigns, we are likely to see a spike in inflation, reversing the downward trends that we saw in the whole of 2017.

A longer electoral calendar also has implications for the stock markets, essentially because of the extension of political uncertainty. Under the current calendar in which the presidential election holds first, the political temperature begins to cool after day one of the two-day calendar. But with the proposed amendments, any possible cooling of political risk would be after the last day of a three-day electoral calendar. Investors are averse to uncertainties and adverse political risk. Therefore, portfolio outflow might be experienced across the securities market.

Finally, elections tend to sap economic activities and the business of the government. It is usual for government workers to take several days of unofficial leave from office as part of the security precautions that are necessary during elections. To make matters worse for the economy, movement is restricted on election days. This means markets and offices are closed for the most of those days. With the proposed amendments, the economic shutdown would now happen over three, instead of, two Saturdays. A rough approach to calculating the extra day of economic shutdown is to average the GDP by days of the year. That would amount to N400 billion, using the 2016 GDP estimate of N145 trillion.

The possible political gains of reordering and extending the electoral calendar is offset by the consequent potential economic losses. Yet the proposed amendment to the Electoral Act is a cold calculation and self-serving stratagem of the leadership of the National Assembly. But that does not invalidate concerns over the undue influence the presidential election has on all the other elections, because of the subsisting sequence of the election.

Cheta Nwanze is Head of Research at SBM Intelligence.