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Inadequacies of the Electoral Act 2022, like others before it, have emerged as the leeway for political aspirants to submit unverified credentials to contest for elections.
In turn, they blamed political parties for not conducting thorough background checks on the certificates of their candidates and advocated tough sanctions for erring parties. Specifically, Section 29 of the Electoral Acts has it that, “Any aspirant who participated in the primaries of his political party who has reasonable grounds to believe that any information given by his political party’s candidate in the affidavit or any document submitted by that candidate in relation to his constitutional requirements to contest the election is false, may file a suit at the Federal High Court against that candidate seeking a declaration that the information contained in the...
But he had no problem passing through the screening committee of the Peoples Democratic Party that fielded him for the election. Also, the case of Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, who was the running mate of the APC governor-elect of Bayelsa State, David Lyon, after winning November 2019 election was another pointer to how parties have been negligent in conducting credible background checks on the certificates presented by their candidates.
The opposition alleged that Buhari did not complete his secondary school education before joining the Nigerian Army, and challenged the authenticity of the WAEC certificate he presented to the INEC. “What can be done is for any person who thinks that a candidate is not fit to stand for election, to seek further investigation or probe into the credentials of those particular candidates. Other than that, it is almost impossible for INEC to begin to go to the primary schools, secondary and all institutions attended by all the candidates in the expectation that some fraudulent cases would have been discovered. That would make it a Herculean challenge.
He said: “Political parties should be seen as banks that do background checks of documents presented by their customers before completing the process of opening accounts for them. And any bank that failed to do it will be flagged and sanctioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria . Ogunleye, who said Nigerians should not contemplate holding 2027 general elections with the subsisting electoral act, said the pronouncements from the courts have clearly shown that the country is yet to get electoral laws that will usher in credible, free and fair election.
He said: “It is only the court that can declare the documents as fake and disqualify the candidate. The power belongs to the people to do the background checks and raise the alarm. It is a pre-election matter.”
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