Former Minister of Sports and Youth, Solomon Dalung, has faulted the Senate over the controversy trailing the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.
The Electoral Act amendment bill passed the third reading at the Senate. But critics like Dalung have blamed the lawmakers for not voting for the real-time electronic transmission of election results.
‘Well, there is no [integrity]—you don’t give what you do not [have]. The Senate has no reputation, and so it cannot give Nigerians a credible or fair election with integrity’, Dalung said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
‘So the behavior of the people and the reaction to what the Senate President considered is based on the integrity of the Senate’.
The controversy trailing the bill is coming about one year before Nigerians head to the polls to elect their leaders.
Dalung is a member of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), one of the leading opposition parties in Nigeria seeking to unseat the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Many critics and observers claim the ADC does not have the wherewithal to challenge President Bola Tinubu’s APC in next year’s election.
Dalung said his party has all it takes to challenge and defeat President Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election, referencing the calibre of persons within the ADC ranks.
‘So I think we have so many people to challenge President Tinubu’, the lawyer, who served as minister under the immediate past leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, said on the show. ‘I can determine to contest the election, and I will challenge him’.
He described President Tinubu as ‘a dwarf in Nigerian political history, and should not be compared with great leaders because great political leaders make legacies. They serve the people. They work for the people’.
‘If President Tinubu is a great politician, as is being speculated, let us see this translated into action’, the ex-minister said.
