![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Senate-confirms-North-East-Development-Commission-board-members.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSome of the federal lawmakers mostly from the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, who spoke with DAILY POST, Thursday said the option of Open Voting was contrary to the Open-Secret system contained in the 2015 version of the Senate rule book.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can any group be agitating against what is already written in the Senate Rule Book which states that the Senate leadership will be elected through \u201d open secret Ballot\u2019 system\u201d, one of the lawmakers said.<\/p>\n
Another Senator said the \u2018secret ballot\u2019 system is not an agenda of eight Senate; pointing out that it was in line with international law practiced in many developed nations of the World.<\/p>\n
He said recent agitation to change the voting pattern for the ninth National Assembly leadership will unnecessarily heat up the polity.<\/p>\n
Also, some of the APC Senators-elect who pleaded anonymity expressed fears that the continuous bullying and arm twisting of Senators-elect by the National Chairman of All Progressives Congress(APC) , Adams Oshiomhole and his cohort like common children by enforcing Senator Ahmad Lawan on Lawmakers for Senate Presidency may eventually back fire.<\/p>\n
One of the Senators-elect added that it is laughable to call for open ballot voting in order to impose Lawan on lawmakers like \u2018class captain\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet it be known that Open Secret ballot system is the standard system of voting in any civilized democracy, which will enable Senators-elect vote their leaders without fear or intimidation\u201dhe said<\/p>\n
The lawmakers cited Article 21.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that, \u201cthe will of the people shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n
They made similar reference to Article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights (the Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica) which grants every citizen of member states of the Organization of American States the right and opportunity \u201cto vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and by secret ballot that guarantees the free expression of the will of the voters\u201d.<\/p>\n
The lawmakers noted that Paragraph 7.4 of the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, obligates the member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to, \u201censure that votes are cast by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedure, and that they are counted and reported honestly with the official results made public.\u201d<\/p>\n
To them, therefore, agitations by some faceless groups asking the Nigerian Parliament to reintroduce Open Ballot system is in gross violation of International laws and especially the Senate Rule Book as Amended which categorically states that the leadership of the Senate shall be done through open secret ballot system.<\/p>\n
The ruling All Progressives Congress has endorsed Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan for Senate Presidency inflaming the suspicion of lawmakers that the clamour for Open Voting against Secret ballot was orchestrated by forces outside of the Senate who will stop at nothing to dictate its next leadership.<\/p>\n
Attempt to speak with Senator Kaka Garbai who is the Senate Committee Chairman on Business and Rules did not yield result as he kept avoiding DAILY POST after he initially expressed willingness to speak.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ahead of 10th June inauguration of the 9th National Assembly, some Senators-elect have opted for secret voting system, saying that the approach was in line with Senate rules. Some of the federal lawmakers mostly from the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, who spoke with DAILY POST, Thursday said the option of Open Voting was contrary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/105407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}