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Human rights lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), has said the Constitution empowers the National Assembly to override the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), if he fails to assent to the Electoral Bill.
The lawyer, who expressed doubts that President Buhari might not assent to the Bill, wondered why he would miss the opportunity to put his signature on a Bill that will help in overriding all the challenges witnessed in the last six years.
Ozekhome said this when he appeared on Arise TV on Monday which is the last day the President has to assent to the Bill passed to him by the National Assembly.
He said, “Let me say this very clearly, I don’t think President Buhari will assent to that Bill. I want to be proven wrong for once because all my predictions about this government have always come to pass.”
He continued, “There shouldn’t be this fear that today is the last day that the President must assent to the bill because it was sent to him on the 19th of November. People think that the 19th of December makes it 30 days, No. For you to know how to calculate days in an enactment for an Act to be done, you have to go to what we call the Interpretation Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. Under Sections 2 and 3 of the Interpretation Act, when an Act is to be done, you leave out the day when the Act is to be done and start calculating from the next day. So, in law, you start calculating from 20th November 2021, not from 19th of November.”
On the stance the lawmakers in the ninth National Assembly will take if the President fails to assent to the Bill, Ozekhome lamented that they are always quick to grant the President’s desires.
He, however, pointed out that Sections of the Constitution empowers them to override the President’s veto through a two-third majority vote
The lawyer urged the President’s advisers, the Attorney General of the Federation and others to urge him to assent to the Bill which he says will put power in the hands of the people.
