When the amended Electoral Act was first transmitted to the president for assent late last year, the controversy centred on the mode of primary for electing candidates for elections. In the amendment, the National Assembly (NASS) had provided only for direct primary, a regulation some feared was calculated to clip the wings of overbearing governors who had perfected the art of compelling delegates in indirect primary to do their bidding. Most commentators supported the provision and did their best to importune the president to assent the first draft. In the end, however, President Muhammadu Buhari withheld assent and returned the bill to the lawmakers to rework. Presidency sources disclosed that the president’s action followed the Justice minister Abubakar Malami’s advice that the bill incapacitated by many anti-democratic provisions. Since the bill also contained provision for electronic transmission of election results, most Nigerians were willing to sacrifice the direct primary provision.

Alas, the bill is not yet out of the woods. Reworked and returned to the president, it contains, for instance, fresh provisions that included the adoption of consensus mode of primary but made burdensome, the compulsory resignation of ministers, commissioners and political appointees before primaries in addition to their disqualification from serving as delegates during primaries or being voted for should they aspire for any elective position. The drafting of the bill has unfortunately painted the NASS as vengeful, as if the lawmakers have an axe to grind with targeted political functionaries, as if they were bent on demanding a pound of flesh whether their victims bled or not. But whether the lawmakers’ remorselessness is enough to dissuade the president from assenting the bill remains to be seen. And whether President Buhari, who had signaled his intention to leave the electoral system in better regulatory environment before he leaves office, will by default cause the country to return to the previous Electoral Act is also not clear.

What appears to be clear, however, is that Mr Malami, who also doubles as the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), will wield enormous influence on the president and the reworked bill. He confirmed to newsmen on Tuesday that he had received the bill from the president asking for review and advice. He will give the advice in so far as the bill aligns with national interest. How he will measure that national interest is not known. But some analysts consider him notorious for conflating private and national interest, and sometimes too, public and ruling party interest. In advising the president to decline assent to the former bill, the public noted that Mr Malami’s sympathies were consistently with the governors, and it was not surprising that he advised accordingly to suit that end. He is also believed to be interested in the presidency, probably as a running mate. He would of course be loth to resign his position, as provided by the reworked bill, before actively participating in any primary, either as aspirant or delegate. Could he then be trusted to be dispassionate in the matter and in his advice?

In a week or two, Mr Malami will give the awaited advice. His advice carries weight with the president, as he is believed to be the most influential minister today, particularly in the absence of the late Abba Kyari, former Chief of Staff to the President. Mr Kyari wielded his influence behind closed doors, sometimes even anonymously. Mr Malami on the other hand has wielded his influence with plenty of braggadocio, often without consideration for presidential, cabinet or political party boundaries. He acknowledged last week that it would be premature to determine which way his advice would head, insisting in addition that his office is constitutionally guided by public and national interest. He exaggerates his altruism. Without equivocation, it can be said that he will be guided by the dominant position of party panjandrums, the president himself, and most crucially his own sometimes private and primordial interests.

But despite the NASS overreaching themselves in the reworked bill, with provisions that do not take cognisance of the future but of the present, there is not enough in what was transmitted to the president to cause him to withhold assent. The electronic transmission of results provision may be laced with booby traps, and a few other provisions in the new bill may foolishly target certain political appointees and other office holders, but they are not enough to lead the president to decline assent a second time. Should he withhold assent again, the NASS, which has never developed the stomach for a big fight with the presidency, may be extremely reluctant to pick a fight. Picking a fight with the presidency in a delicate year like 2022, when the APC still can’t see the wood for the trees over its convention, may be fraught with befuddling difficulties. And so, whether intentional or not, the country may be in danger of returning to the old Electoral Act, thus dooming the president’s plans to reform and bequeath an electoral system he believes will last.

Segun Oni jumps ship again

No one in Ekiti possesses as much potential to succeed as an administrator like Segun Oni, an engineer and former governor, but no one has been as plagued by bad luck. He will hope that in the next few months, as Ekiti goes to the poll in June, his luck will turn. Governor in 2007 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) till 2010 when the courts sacked him, he managed to endear himself to the state by running an inclusive, stable and pragmatic administration. He is self-effacing and simple, but nevertheless firm and a good manager of men and resources. His independence brought him in conflict with the restless and combative former governor Ayo Fayose in the PDP, leading to his exit and defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014. He was and remains at bottom a progressive but a counterintuitively non-ideological politician.

Six years later, Mr Oni was back in the PDP when it became clear to him that Governor Kayode Fayemi had kept the APC on a short leash that would preclude any independent-minded aspirant from having even a glance at the governorship in 2022. Two years after he went back to the PDP and eight years after he first left the party, that same independent-mindedness has again led to his defection from the same party. It is rumoured that he might be heading to the south-eastern All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), a rumour he has neither confirmed nor repudiated. If he goes to APGA, and enjoys the fellowship and campaigning vigour of incoming Anambra State governor Charles Soludo, Mr Oni would be demonstrating a pluckiness no one imagined he had as well as sailing near the wind in expecting Ekiti to travel with him to a Southeast-based political party.

Despite his enormous gifts, it is clear that Mr Oni is obsessed with contesting the governorship to prove he can win the poll by himself. He trusts Ekiti to abide with him. But does he not fear that Ekiti would regard him as whimsical given the manner he has defected from one party to another at the drop of a hat? Whichever party he goes next will naturally offer him the standard-bearer ticket. It will then be left to him to prove that Ekiti is as sophisticated in voting behavior as he imagines. Should he go on to defeat the two dominant parties in Nigeria, this agile forum shopper will have enacted a quiet revolution the country would talk about for a very long time.