By Henry Umoru

ABUJA—There are moves by the National Assembly to amend the 2022 Electoral Act to allow statutory delegates to participate in party primaries.

President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who disclosed this in an audience with the national leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja yesterday, assured that statutory delegates would participate in party primaries next year.

He said the omission of statutory delegates from the primaries of political parties in the 2022 Electoral Act was a costly mistake that must be corrected before the next round of general elections.

Akpabio, who also urged the leadership of NBA to weed out quacks from the legal profession, said: “There were defects in the last Electoral Act that was amended. So, we want to cure some of the defects that we found in our electoral system. I can tell you one.

“Without any particular intention from the Parliament, in the 2023 elections and the 2022 primaries, we inadvertently created what I may call super-delegates.

“Because all the statutory delegates, starting from the president, the vice president, governors, deputy governors, the Senate president, Deputy Senate President, speaker, deputy speaker, members of parliament (national and sub-national), chairmen of councils, and all, were omitted as delegates.

“These are areas we think we can look at in order to make our democracy more participatory because democracy is all about numbers.

“We ended up at a national level bringing out the President. We had about 2,380, because we had 3,000 people in each of the local government areas omitted from the amendment.

“It meant that all others, unless you contested to be an ad hoc delegate, were not welcome at the primaries to select flag bearers of the legislative houses, governorship, and, of course, flag bearer of the presidential conventions in all the political parties across the country.





https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/03/party-primary-nass-mulls-amending-2022-electoral-act/