Buhari, Lawan meet on Electoral Act Amendment Bill

[President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday met with the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, on the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.

Lawan, who spoke with State House correspondents after the closed-door meeting with the President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, expressed hope that Buhari would sign the bill soon.

The National Assembly forwarded the Electoral Act Amendment Bill to the President last week.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, met with President Buhari on the matter on November 18.

Gbajabiamila also expressed optimism that the amended bill would soon be signed into law by the President.

Some governors had expressed their reservation about direct primaries adopted by the National Assembly in the bill and urged the President not to sign it into law.

The Senate President, however, maintained that the National Assembly had done its job by transmitting the bill to the President for him to sign into law.

READ ALSO: Gbajabiamila meets Buhari on Electoral Act, insists on direct primaries

He said: “Sometimes this kind of disagreement happens. And when they do, I think the best way forward is for people to engage.

“I always believe, and I have conversed over this, that National Assembly members are major stakeholders; governors of All Progressives Congress (APC) are major stakeholders and in fact, the presidency is a major stakeholder.

“In fact, the presidency is the biggest stakeholder because it runs the administration, and our party must always try to bring everybody together.

“I don’t think there will be any day that you will have a political issue that everybody will say the same thing.

“So when we have any section of a party disagreeing with something, we should be engaging; that’s why we are politicians; we must have that kind of a platform where we discuss issues.

“I don’t think it is right to say that governors have disagreed. Maybe some governors might have said they didn’t like it this way.

“That’s normal. So it’s for us to engage and engage and engage.”

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