Perspectives on Buhari’s fresh war on democracy

• What Electoral Act amendment bill means for 2019 poll
Here is what the body language of President Muhammadu Buhari reveals concerning his decision to sweep the 2018 Electoral Act amendment bill into the dungeon: He is not interested in preserving or promoting democracy. He has been taking Nigerians for a ride, typical of the military man that he is, and wants to condone political corruption by shunning initiatives aimed at ensuring electoral fidelity.      
  
Painfully, the president does not seem to place any premium on Executive versus Legislature harmony. By declining assent to the beleaguered bill barely 60 days to the 2019 general election and after three previous declamations, Buhari seems also to exhibit crass superciliousness and nonchalance towards the work of the Nigerian parliament.
   
It is on record that on each of the three previous occasions when Buhari refused to append his signature on the bill, which is supposed to be a working legal document to moderate the processes pertaining to next year’s election, members of the National Assembly tended to bend backwards to accommodate his deductions and suggestions.

Shunning Saraki’s counsel
At a point when it became evident that some parochial political forces were inclined to supporting Buhari’s decision to decline assent, President of Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, urged the president to rather decline the advice of anti-democratic elements, who were piling up pressure on him not to give assent to the 2018 Electoral Bill.
  
Describing the forces against presidential assent as anti-democratic elements, Saraki, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Yusuph Olaniyonu, pleaded with President Buhari “to rise above petty politics and act in the best interest of the country and its democracy by signing the Electoral Bill into law.”
  
The fact that the president dillydallied to the last minute of the one month window stipulated by the Constitution for the bill to receive Presidential attention, Buhari proved skeptics wrong that he was not working to appropriate flaws in the Electoral Act to rig himself back into office.
  
The president has been avowing his desire to ensure that the 2019 poll is not only free and fair, but also credible in line with international standards. Nevertheless, what the president, who is touted to be imbued with integrity, has not commented upon is the apprehension even in the international community that his ambition for another term would predispose him to seek unfair advantages at the poll.
  
After withholding assent to the 2018 Electoral Act amendment bill for a record four times, the President has left no one in doubt that he means business to secure a second term at the expense of a credible process. By his obdurate stance, Buhari has passed across some unmistakable hints to Nigerians that next year’s election would be a battle between democratic openness and despotic imposition.
   
In the first place, the president wants to show the country’s federal lawmakers that when it comes to presidential system of government, he is the real deal and that, as a former military ruler, he is prepared to take power by force.
  
But being at the core of a credible 2019 poll, the president is simply saying to the legislators that he is not a Goodluck Jonathan who could fold his hands and decline to appropriate more than 40 per cent of the enormous powers available to a Nigeria president to diffuse any gang up.As such President Buhari has, by declining assent to the bill, declared war on democracy and challenged Nigerians to do their worse.

Possible implications
THE rejection of 2018 Electoral Act amendment bill came at a time when details of the imperfections of the 2015 poll are still haunting the public. It has been variously reported that loopholes in the 2010 Electoral Act presented political parties, especially the APC opportunity to earn dubious ballots from unaccredited voters.
   
Although 31,746,490 were recorded as accredited voters in the election, analysis reveals that 13,536,311 voters cast their ballots without biometric accreditation. It was also seen that President Buhari got the largest haul from the imprecise voters to the extent that 75 per cent of the votes that returned him as winner came from unaccountable voters.
  
It is therefore apparent that President Buhari’s resolve to stonewall every attempt to rectify the leakages in the Electoral Act is motivated by his desire to cling to ghost voters that gifted him 2015 victory.The president seems to be emboldened by the division within the National Assembly, which gives the impression that attaining the two-thirds majority of the lawmakers needed to veto the president’s decision would be improbable.
  
But if neither the Green nor Red Chambers could boast of majority legislators to reshape the leadership of the bi-cameral federal legislatures, attempt to override President Buhari’s declamation, it would show who among the lawmakers are on the side of democracy and those against it.The presidency plans to present the 2019 appropriation to the National Assembly. Coming shortly after the president’s affront on a joint project of the two chambers, the planned budget could become a new pawn in the Executive versus Legislature confrontation.