Dan Orbih: Edo PDP Chairman

Jethro Ibileke/Benin

President Muhammadu Buhari, has been charged to sign the amended electoral act into law without any further delay.

Edo State Chairman of the Peoples’s Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Dan Orbih, gave the charge weekend, while speaking with journalists at Igbinedion University, Okada, shortly after he was conferred with an honorary doctorate degree in Political Science.

He said that it has become a course for concern that Buhari was carrying on as if there is nothing at stake by refusing to assent to the bill, just as he noted that most of the concerns by the President were addressed in the final draft bill.

He therefore said that there is an urgent need for the President to immediately sign the bill into law so as to give the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), enough time to meet the specific provisions of the law.

“These are not good signs for the forthcoming elections. I am disturbed by the silence of Nigerians over the continued delay by Buhari to sign the electoral act as amended and passed by the National Assembly. The issue is what law is not INEC going to use to conduct the election,” Orbih said.

He wondered how the thorny issue of the card reader will be resolved in the event that the President did not sign the bill into law and also the transmission of results from the polling units to the collation centre immediately they are announced so that nobody tampers with the verdict of the people.

He remarked that he was worried by the huge number of uncollected Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) by people in different states as recently announced by the commission, advising that there must be active participation by the citizenry to have a true democray in the country.

Orbih also called on lecturers who are currently on a nationwide strike over improved welfare conditions and poor funding to take a stand on the happenings in the larger society which they are part of.

He said: “Lecturers should not stay aloof from the happenings in the larger society. They should behave like Wole Soyinka and the late Prof. Ayodele Awojobi. They buy from the same market as the ordinary man. They travel on the same roads and so should not just sit down and murmur.”