A former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attaihiru Jega, says it is necessary to proscribe cross carpeting in order to deepen democracy in the country.
Jega stated this on Tuesday in Abuja at the Citizens Town Hall on Electoral Reforms organised by the National Assembly Joint Committee on Electoral Reforms.
He also recommended that the appointment of the Chairman, the National Commissioners and the Resident Electoral Commissioners of the commission should be reviewed.
Jega noted that in appointing people to man the commission, their partisanship and integrity have to be considered.
He stated: “If we want to improve our politics, deepen our democracy, and improve electoral integrity, it is necessary to prescribe cross carpeting by politicians from one party to another.
“I think this is very important and I think the reason why it does not seem to be appealing to our legislators to do that is because the challenges they face in the primaries force many of them to move to other parties where they think they will find a platform to contest and when they across carpet, they move most cases in the legislatures to the ruling parties, but it undermines the fundamental essence of democracy. “
Jega said it was also important to unbundle INEC, adding that the commission is saddled with too much responsibility which is affecting other Cote responsibilities of the commission.
He noted: “I strongly support the recommendation that the appointment of the Chairman, the National Commissioners and the Resident Electoral Commissioners should be reviewed. I think the conventional method in which the president nominates and invariably what the president nominates does not go through rigorous screening and is basically supported by the legislature, I think we have to avoid this.
“We need a transparent process, we need to ensure there is full screening, in particular, we need to ensure the legal provision about non-partisanship, about integrity of the people nominated are actually take seriously
“We need to review how people stand to contest the presidential election. Maybe we can even extend it to governorship elections. I think Nigeria is one of the few countries whereby anybody can form a political party and run for presidential election, which creates very serious problems in terms of logistics of the preparation, wastefulness in regard to the resources deployed for elections.
“I think we need to create a fresh hurdle, a political party cannot field their candidate for president until they meet a certain fresh hurdle. This is done in many other countries and we need to begin to pay attention to that.”