By Emman Ovuakporie

ABUJA—HE House of Representatives, yesterday, revisited the Electoral Act Amendment Bill without the controversial election sequence clauses.

However, spokesman of the House, Abdulrazak Namdas, later at a media briefing, insisted that the election reordering move was not an abandoned project yet, explaining that it would come independently as a bill at a later date.

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Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari earlier in the year, declined assent to the bill as passed by the National Assembly, raising issues on the alteration of election sequence among others, which he argued were lawfully the exclusive prerogatives of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

The House later vowed to reintroduce the bill and pursue the election reordering amendment to the end.

There were initial shouts of objections just when the motion for the bill’s second reading was moved by Chairman of the Committee on Electoral and Political Parties Matters, Aisha Dukku, with some members arguing that the bill should be stepped down.

Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Business, Emmanuel Orker-Jev (APC, Benue), explained: “We have expunged all the clauses that Mr. President took objections to., hence the bill has been remodeled.”

He added that the call by his colleagues to step down the bill was uncalled for.

In her lead debate on the new amendment bill, Dukku said it was a consolidation of 10 private members’ bills, adding that the planned reforms were rooted on the need to consolidate on the gains of the 2015 elections, and address the lacuna in the legal framework.

Key areas of the new amendment which scaled second reading in the House yesterday include empowerment of election tribunals, or courts to declare candidates who score the second highest votes winner of election, when it is discovered that the winner of an election was unqualified Ab initio, and a mandate to all political parties to ensure that their women leaders are persons of feminine gender and that youth leaders fall within 18-45 age bracket.

Also, there is a proposal for an increase in the maximum permissible expenditure for various electoral positions, and to ensure transparency in election processes by making the card reader as credible means of voters accreditation.