Spokesperson of the senate, Ajibola Basiru has described the argument of President Muhammadu Buhari on the issue of cost of direct primary in the electoral act amendment bill as “totally fallacious”.
Buhari had rejected the electoral bill on the grounds of insecurity and cost of conducting direct primaries.
Speaking on the development, the senate spokesperson, in an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday, said the national assembly has four options to explore following the rejection of the bill.
Highlighting the four options, he said the national assembly can discard the bill like the eighth assembly, adjust the bill in line with Buhari’s argument, remove the provision of direct primary, or override the president.
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“It is very important to say that as members of the national assembly, we are approaching this issue not out of any sense of egotism or any sense of power tussle with anybody.
“But we will consider it based on counter arguments that may be canvassed against whatever reasons the president had given.
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“For instance, the argument on the cost that had been raised by Mr president, with respect, is presumptuous and totally fallacious. There is nothing that is given that primary election must be conducted on a ward basis; it could as well be conducted either on a quarterly basis or on a local government basis.
“As regards argument on smaller political parties, smaller political parties may decide to even organise their direct primary at the state level.
“On the issue of security, an extension of that argument will be that because we have security challenges, then we should not even hold the 2023 elections; this is if we want to use what logicians called reductio ad absurdum, that is reducing the argument to the level of absurdity.”
