A member of the House of Representatives, Bayo Balogun, on Wednesday said the green chamber is advancing a bill seeking to amend the 1999 Constitution to make the Court of Appeal the final arbiter on governorship election petitions in Nigeria.

Balogun, the Chairman of the House Committee on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), stated this on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday.

“One advantage of that provision is that while the State and National Assembly petitions are in the Tribunal, the presidential and governorship petitions will be at the Appeal Court. So, by the time they are moving from the Appeal to the Supreme Court, the one of the State and National Assembly will now be going to the Appeal Court. So, we will now have a spread,” he stated.

“What we are trying to do now is to reduce the tribunal period to 90 days and the appeal to 50 days,” he added.

“Then we have 21 days for filing of the petition and 14 days for filing of the appeal. By the time we put all these numbers together, we are looking at 185 days.

“What we are putting down in the Act is that the election will not be held later than 185 days to the swearing-in. Once we remove it from the constitution, we will now put the provisions in the Electoral Act.”

According to the lawmaker, the law would make INEC hold elections earlier than February to pave the way for the conclusion of post-election litigations before the end of a governor’s tenure. He explained that there wouldn’t be three tiers of court for anybody after a governorship poll has been conducted.

The bill, if passed, will remove the Supreme Court from the appeal process in governorship disputes. Under the current system, governorship election disputes can be escalated from the Tribunal to the Court of Appeal and ultimately to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the final court for governorship election petitions, while the Court of Appeal is the final court for National and State House of Assembly election cases.

The proposed legislation, titled ‘A Bill for an Act to Alter the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 to Make the Court of Appeal the Final Appeal Court in Governorship, National and State Houses of Assembly Election,’ was sponsored by Nnamdi Ezechi, a member representing Ndokwa East/Ndokwa West/Ukwuani Constituency.