House Yet to Receive Report on Electoral Act, Says Gbajabiamila

By Udora Orizu

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, at the plenary, Tuesday decried reports that the lawmakers were planning to remove electronic transmission of election result from the Electoral Act amendment bill, saying that they are yet to receive the report from the committee.

Gbajabiamila’s statement was in response to a point of order raised by a member, Hon. Ugonna Ozurigbo, who said his constituents had inundated him with calls, demanding why the lawmakers would refuse electronic transmission of election results.

Ozurigbo said, “A number of Nigerians have been calling me to express worry about the alteration to the electoral act. I don’t know the information going around where they said that we carefully amended section 50 subsection 2 that the agreed electronically transmitted election result have been changed to manually transmitted. I think my privilege has been breached.”

Responding, the Speaker said he had made it a habit not to respond to every media report, as the Committee saddled with the responsibility of working on the Electoral Act was yet to submit a report to the House.

He said, “the House will follow its normal procedure in considering clause by clause of the Bill when the Committee submits its report. I have asked the Chairman of the Committee and she told me that she was not aware of that.”