Chairman Body of Benchers, Chief Wole Olanipekun, has tasked the National Assembly to regulate the powers of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as enshrined in the Electoral Act.
Olanipekun, who spoke after a private visit to Governor Biodun Oyebanji, in his office in Ado-Ekiti said:“ To me is a very dangerous section, so novel in the sense that, here you have a section that empowers a returning officer after returning to review his decision within a period of seven days.”
According to him,” In Section 65 of the Electoral Act, “the returning officer is not a court of law, not a tribunal, not vested with jurisdiction to exercise quasi-decision or to assume jurisdiction over any matter that is judicial in nature.”
He pointed out that he is not aware of any similar section in the previous electoral acts, or any similar section in any electoral acts of any country in the world.
“The Chief Returning Officer, is the Chairman of INEC, meaning you can return someone as President today, and tomorrow, when there are agitations here and there, he may withdraw his decision, saying “I am revising myself and am now returning somebody else.”
Chief Olanipekun, said he was so surprised that the National Assembly have to allow that section to creep into the electoral act which they submitted to Mr. President for signing.
He urged the National Assembly members that they can still remove that condition and called on all stakeholders, particularly the political parties to “shine their eyes”, to monitor INEC, the returning officers, so that nothing untoward happens to any party, any candidate returned to be unreturned again.
