Senate Leadership: Legislators Disagree Over Voting Method

Barely three weeks to the election of the presiding officers of the ninth National Assembly, signs of discord that could mar the entire exercise at the Senate as well as the inauguration of the lawmakers have emerged.

Senators from the camps of the two most prominent candidates for the position of Senate president are now locked in exchange of threats and counter-threats of violence. The source of contention is the method of voting to be adopted for the election.

 

The current Senate standing rule, copies of which have already been distributed to all the senators-elect, dictates that the method of voting shall be by secret balloting. In compliance with the subsisting rule, an All Progressives Congress (APC) senator-elect, who is loyal to the camp of one of the two prominent candidates, Alli Ndume, warned during an interaction with journalists that the management must sustain the secret voting method as provided in the current Senate standing rule to avoid any violent clash on the inauguration day. 

The senator-elect, who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “Members of the Ahmed Lawan group are jittery that their candidate would not win if the management should adopt the current rule book to conduct the election.”

(Guardian)