Kaduna Assembly debunks allegations on amending SIECOM law ahead of local government elections

In response to the press conference that was issued yesterday by the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party with respect to some of the activities that were being done at the House. It is of interest to us because without this clarification, the public might be misled. To start with, the chairman raised some concerns […]

In response to the press conference that was issued yesterday by the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party with respect to some of the activities that were being done at the House. It is of interest to us because without this clarification, the public might be misled.

To start with, the chairman raised some concerns that today, plenary, the members of the House of Assembly are planning to amend laws of SIECOM, that is State Independent Electoral Commission, in respect to the forthcoming election that is coming up next week.

We are here to make bold this morning to address the people of the State, to tell them that there is nothing like that that is going to happen today. I’m here this morning with a copy of the other paper where all our activities for the day is captured. I’m going to give it to you later so I can see there’s nothing like amendment of SIECOM laws.

We, the members of this assembly, before we proceeded for our recess, we amended the SIECOM law based on some issues that arose at that time.

• Hardship: Those who collected spaghetti, wrapper during election suffering most – Damagum
• Bayelsa APC suspends Lokpobiri, Lyon, others

As we all know, that laws are dynamic in nature. Even the National Assembly, after every election cycle, there’s need to amend the laws to suit the prevailing circumstances. So there’s nothing wrong for us to do that.

There are areas we highlighted. For instance, the issue of electronic voting machine came up. As we all know, INEC conducted voter’s registration where more polling units were created. And if we must go into this election with the time that is involved, we are supposed to provide machines for over 3,000 polling units with which the State cannot get as at that time because they manufacture these things not in this country and then the manufacturers don’t manufacture them and keep. You have to give them a specification to manufacture according to your specification.

So reasons like this warranted the change of the electronic voting to manual voting. There were other things that were changed to, for instance due to the due to the nature of the state, there are areas that have been polarized with insecurity and as another point you cannot is there are some there are some things that will change. So we give them the liberty if there is the areas where there is insecurity or the feel threatened, the commission can design, that is according to section 23 of the amended law, the results of the elections under this law may be collated and announced at the at the commission head office or such other place or places the commission may designate by any of the following.

Chairman of the commission, for instance, there are some horrible places in the state that you myself know that even if they send you to go and connect the election there you may likely not want to go there and you cannot compel them to go and do whatever so they will find whatever means peaceful to make sure that they get that done.

In the issue he raised, I have made clear concerning that we’re not making any amendment now all our members have been done since July, I’ve also told you the areas which we touched and some other areas because laws are dynamic.

And he also talked about our speaker you know being seen allegedly with some people and we said that our speaker has a constituency. Like all of us here, we visit offices to seek for things for our constituents. If we sit down here at the assembly complex, sometimes nothing will move. So we do mainly move around from one place to the other to ensure that our people derive maximum benefit from our time of office. Because by the time we leave this place without any tangible benefit to them, we will also be accused for not performing. So we equally have ministries we supervise we normally have places we also go for oversights, so when you see us with some of them it doesn’t mean that we are comprised of opposition it is part of the job.

In the speech a lot of concerns were raised. The people of Kaduna state should know that as it stands today with the local government elections we have that the opposition even have more counselors than even the ruling party.

Kaduna state is a state that respects people’s opinion and they want peace. And then as you can see we have a governor that uh is very mindful of our mutual conditions and peaceful coexistence his body language his attitude and everything is pointed to the fact that he wants the people of cardinality to be at peace so he is not going to do anything or we will not collaborate with anybody to do anything that will jeopardize the peaceful nature of coexistence of this state because without peace they are not going to be election in the first place so we are calling on all cities indigenous of this state to go about their campaign as you can see the Deputy Governor of Kaduna said have been everywhere campaigning for her party if they want to read the election they want to steal a leisure will she go out and campaign she’s going from local government to local government campaign for a party so every other political party should go concentrate and do her elections campaign hard and win your elections to avoid all the situations that jeopardize our peaceful coexistence.

Now the another accusation there is that the PDP members should make sure that the law is not amended. Well we I’m speaking as a spokesman of the House but as a block we’re going to meet the party and discuss issues with them. To start with probably if they have sought our consent on issues like this they wouldn’t have gone to the press in the first place because what they were thinking is probably today they were many no is going to be amended today. And when we go to the chambers all of you will be there if there’s any amendment I’m sure you will see but I can tell you there is nothing hidden anywhere.

And we will protect interest of our people we’ll make sure that the people of Kaduna gets the best and although it is on a lighter note, at the chambers we don’t operate on party lines. We operate as an entity called the State House of Assembly for the progress of the state.

Now, based on the law that was amended, SIECOM has the right to announce results centrally. Where they feel threatened, they have the right to announce it. Where they feel insecure, they have the right to a announce it for the safety of our workers, for the safety of our staff, and for the safety of the people. Thank you very much.

Hon Henry Marah Zachariah,
The chairman of the Kaduna State House Committee on Information
Member representating Jaba Constituency