ASSURANCES from the National Assembly that 29 May reminds the handing over date resound in their emptiness.

The more the National Assembly talks about this matter, the more Nigerians find good reasons to be concerned about the elongating processes to the 2011 elections.

The message of lawmakers spending their precious time assuring Nigerians of a handover date is no longer lost on those, who in the last one year have been warning that the 2011 elections would suffer from the usual confusion, and an additional one that would arise from the late preparations for the polls.

Yet, these elections are meant to be  the defining marks of elections in Nigeria. Everyone talks about them as if words are enough to organise elections. We have expended so much time talking about these elections that someone cannot be blamed if he thinks Nigeria is about to hold elections for the first time.

President Goodluck Jonathan promises that it would be the freest and fairest elections to be held in Nigeria. It would be nice to hear the opinion of losers after the polls. All he does these days is to repeat the promise as if it adds any value to anything. If there had been any changes in the evolving scenario there would have been something to discuss.

When the President speaks of free and fair elections, he leads others through the false hope that something was being done. It has become the lot of the other agents in the elections to join the chorus without qualms.

Professor Attahiru Jega makes daily declarations on how the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, is able to conduct the elections now if the National Assembly provides the enabling law.

First, he wanted money. He got it. He returned to ask for extension of time, he got it. A Federal High Court annulled that gift last week when it ruled that the amended Constitution, on which the 2010 Electoral Act was built, which awarded INEC more time to prepare for the elections, was null and void.

These days, Jega is more sober. He blames delays in the National Assembly enacting a new law for the elections for the non-commencement of most of the processes that would ensure the elections hold.

Are we also waiting for the National  Assembly to buy the machines for registration of voters? In a way, the National Assembly is responsible too for that delay. The time it wasted since 2008 in amending the Constitution is now counting.

While the National Assembly delights in its self-importance, it forgets that it exists to make laws for the good governance of Nigeria. Its contentment with doing ordinary things or nothing at all is affecting Nigerians.

We have gradually moved from expecting the freest and fairest elections to wondering whether the elections will hold and when. The worries are genuine and Jega seems to have realised how serious the challenges ahead of INEC are.

These days he reminds Nigerians that matters rest with the National Assembly.

At a time it has drawn the country closer to the precipice than three years ago, the best assurance the National Assembly can provide is that it will make 29 May sacrosanct by law.

It wants to make a law that will ensure handover is done on that date no matter what happens? How else can the National Assembly show it has nothing to do? How will a law ensure that 29 May will be the handover date? Is the law the National Assembly is proposing superior to constitutional provisions that are clear about the tenure of elected officials?

If the elections do not hold, who will handover to who? Constitutionally, the tenure of the President runs out on 29 May. If there is no elected government by that date, he will hand over to the Senate President. There is such  possibility.

Some of us have forgotten that the life of the National Assembly subsists into June 2011.

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua inaugurated the current National Assembly on 5 June 2007. Its tenure therefore expires on 4 June 2011,  six days after the tenure of the President would have expired.

Why is the National Assembly uninterested in passing the constitutional amendments in line with the law? Does the National Assembly know that the delays debates over its attitude is causing will be the major reasons for delays in getting the election processes on track?

The National Assembly is insistent that amendments to the Constitution are law without the assent of the President. What is this point that it must make? Is this important more than a safe delivery of the elections and the continuation of the democracy that Nigerians have been craving?

The National Assembly can still redeem itself but at a price that will nibble at its ego. Will it accept eating a humble pie after taking the country on a circus? What is the point of the insistence that the President does not have to sign the amended Constitution? At what point will the National Assembly stop this confusion that it has sustained.

If this issue drags, it will wipe away whatever time that can still be squeezed out of the tight schedule before the elections. Is the National Assembly unaware of these constraints?

The issue of the moment, for anyone that thinks well of this country, is that it is important to bring the National Assembly to a realisation of the implications of its absurdity.

Nigeria’s democracy is on a dangerous descent. Some think they can live above the mayhem that they are stirring. They are the ones stressing the importance of the National Assembly above the sustenance of Nigeria and its democracy.

The dangers the National Assembly currently poses to our democracy cannot be ameliorated by these assurances that are the first admission of  its insidious role.

We are only months away from the handing over date, but we are busy with debates about laws for the elections as if they are two years away.

This setting is too frightening to be addressed with wordy assurances.