The House of Representatives ‘ayes and nays’ method with which President Bola Tinubu’s state of emergency declaration was passed has come under public scrutiny. While the debate rages on about its legality, FIJ found the voice vote process through which the HoR acquiesced to Tinubu’s declaration surprising.

Tinubu made the state of emergency declaration on Tuesday without approval of the House. Section 305 (6b) of the Constitution mandates that such a declaration ceases to stand if the two legislative chambers do not rule in its favour.

Both chambers sat on Wednesday to debate the president’s order, but the sitting was postponed because a quorum could not be reached. The quorum, which is the minimum number of representatives present before legislative business can take place, for the HoR, is 120 of 360 members; that is one-third.

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According to Peoples Gazette, a roll call showed that less than 80 members were present in the lower chamber on Wednesday, hence the adjournment.

Tajudeen Abbas, the HoR Speaker, said there were 243 members in attendance on Thursday. But when Obi Agwuncha, a representative of Ikwuano/Umuahia and North/Umuahia constituency of Abia State attempted to stop the debate so that a head count could be conducted, Abbas overruled him.

While FIJ could not readily determine whether the quorum was formed, pictures from the plenary session suggest there are reasons to doubt the Speaker’s claim.

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Apart from the quorum problem, the ‘ayes and nays’ method Abbas employed prevented the public from trusting the merit of the process. With a voice vote, one could not tell which representative voted along which line.

It could be said that Section 305 (6b) of the Constitution was breached since it specifically locates the power to determine a presidential order of a state of emergency by two-thirds of House members, a number that cannot be certainly determined by who screams in the loudest decibel.

For the Senate, the decision approval was made behind closed doors. However, a press release from Ireti Kingibe, a senator representing Abuja, suggests that the Senate similarly used the voice vote method.

“A voice vote is insufficient for determining a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly for an emergency proclamation. A formal vote is crucial to confirm the exact number of lawmakers in support,” Kingibe stated on Friday.

Joe Abah, a Nigerian Lawyer and former public servant, also echoed Kingibe’s opinion. He said the voice vote method would hide legislators from the people who voted for them.

In 2021, when the HoR was debating the electronic transmission of the 2023 election results, TheCable reported that when a motion for the e-transmission was proposed, the ‘ayes’ were louder than the ‘nays’, but Ahmed Wase, the HoR Deputy of the 9th Assembly, ruled in favour of the ‘nays’.

NIGERIA HAS E-VOTING SYSTEM FOR REPRESENTATIVES, IT WAS JUST IGNORED

The HoR launched an e-voting system for legislative issues in 2016. This was made known by Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the 8th Assembly.

In 2019, Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the 9th Assembly, announced the launching of an “e-voting/e-chamber attendance register”.

“Constituents can now know how their lawmaker voted on critical legislations,” Gbajabiamila said, stressing the importance of the technology.

Despite this, save for the National Assembly TV, constituents cannot appropriately follow the activities of individual representatives, either to check their votes or their presence in the two chambers, amidst other needs for transparency that could enhance accountability.

HOW REPS E-VOTE WORKS IDEALLY

It is not desirable to have a representative e-voting platform when there’s no platform where citizens can monitor it.

The US, for instance, has this e-voting platform, but unlike Nigeria, every record of every representative is not only well-documented but is also made accessible to US citizens all across the globe.

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To know all the votes of a representative, one needs to navigate the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives website.

For instance, as of press time, the website shows that the first session of the US 119th Assembly will be held at 12 pm on Monday.

To test the effectiveness of the US website, FIJ used a ‘Control of Air Pollution From New Motor Vehicles: Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle Standards’, a bill that had a very tight margin vote between the ‘ayes’ and the ‘nays’.

On the website, the ‘roll call votes’ section has different roll call numbers. For FIJ’s test, the roll number 231, a full list of each representative’s name and whether they voted ‘yay’, ‘nay’ or ‘not voting’ was displayed. The result can be found here.

The ‘ayes’ had 217 votes and ‘nos’ had 204, a fine margin that cannot be determined by mere voice votes.