THERE is no doubt that the new found love between the Presidency and the National Assembly regarding the consistent efforts to amend the 2010 Electoral Act is geared towards rigging the 2011  presidential primaries in January.

The INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega had for the umpteenth time stated the critical place of internal democracy among the political parties in the achievement of a credible 2011 elections.

It would be recalled that the failure of the 2007 elections and the crises that followed were the natural outcome of political party primaries that were rigged and reactions of aspirants that were cheated in the nomination process.Therefore, the danger of rigging the 2011 elections by any means will have great cost on the unity and wellbeing of the nation.

The 2010 Electoral Act is the legal framework that will guide the operation of the next year’s general elections. Since its promulgation few months ago, several political forces have been working to alter its provisions to the advantage of certain aspirants in the 2010 presidential election; especially the party primaries in the PDP.

Under the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime, national delegates to PDP Presidential primaries were drawn from all elected public officers and all political appointees of the President and State Governors of the PDP.

This way, the party primaries were already won and lost before they were conducted. This scenario has been condemned as not engendering fairness and level playing field for all contestants and stakeholders. The 2010 electoral Act sets out to achieve equal opportunities to all aspirants and to ensure that the incumbency factor does not give a sitting Chief Executive an unfair advantage over his political rivals.

This innovation in the Electoral Act 2010 rekindled a good dose of confidence in the parties and their electoral processes; thereby strengthening internal democracy in party politics in Nigeria.

However, it is saddening that, this single democratic step forward is threatened by several steps backward, if the desperate efforts by the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act 2010 succeed. The Act, which has already been amended in the House of Representatives, is now waiting for the concurrence of the Senate for it to be passed. If this is achieved, then, State legislators and other party officials at the state level representing women and the youth would have been disenfranchised in the party process.

The idea of making national delegates who will choose the party’s candidate at the presidential primaries in January 2011, a special club of few political elites is anti-democratic. The President and his deputy, National Assembly members and the State governors and their deputies are not enough to take such crucial party decision to the exclusion of several other stakeholders.

It is also clear that this arrangement if allowed   would make governors minorities in the process. The exclusion of State Assembly members, Woman leaders, Youth leaders and all those political actors who represent the grassroots’ people will be counter-productive in the Nigerian democratic process.

In 2003, the nation woke up to a major scandal that involved, then President Olusegun Obasanjo and the leadership of the then National Assembly in the persons of Ayim Pius Ayim, Senate President and Umar Ghali –Naa’ba, the speaker of the House of Representatives, who mischievously deleted useful sections of the 2002 Electoral Act that did not favour the plan of the PDP to rig the 2003 elections.

As at today, President Obasanjo is no longer in office and Ayim Pius Ayim and Umar Ghali-Naa’ba have not been in any political office since May 2003. For sure these political actors have regretted their infamous act against the nation then and will now live to suffer whatever injustices their selfish action  introduced into the nation’s democratic process.

This amendment is no doubt inspired by the Presidency to weaken the power of state governors and their legislators to participate as delegates at political party primaries. The President had failed in previous attempts to make his ministers, aides and political appointees serve as delegates to the party primaries.

The national law makers have constitutional duty to rise above personal and pecuniary interests and make laws in line with the provision of the constitution which states in chapter 5, part 1: “That the National Assembly shall make laws for order and good governance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

I have hope that the national lawmakers will not subject themselves to the act of making ad hominem legislation targeted in favour or against  individual political actors.It has never been known in the history of nations that societies progressed by making laws that do nothing but ingratiate them to men of power and means.

So Senators should look at this amendment with an eye of wisdom and age which their position connotes and redirect their attitude to lawmaking from that of pure politicking to that driven by patriotism and the quest for nation building

Mr. Ugu JIM-NWOKO, a political analyst, writes from Abuja.