Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist Femi Falana has highlighted a controversial provision in the Electoral Act which he argues effectively bars the majority of citizens from vying for the presidency.
Speaking in an exclusive interview from 9:56 with TheLagacySeries, the senior advocate drew attention to the steep financial requirements embedded in the nation’s electoral laws.
He noted that while public discourse has largely focused on electronic transmission of results, a more fundamental barrier exists within the same legislation.
According to Falana, the law stipulates that any candidate seeking the office of the president must possess a sum of N5 billion.
He argued that such a threshold is deliberately exclusionary, designed to shut out qualified professionals, academics, legal practitioners, and workers who do not belong to the class of billionaires.
The activist contended that the law is not a neutral instrument but reflects the interests of those who crafted it.
He pointed out that although members of the National Assembly are elected to represent the people, the laws they produce often ultimately serve the bourgeoisie.
His words: “So take the recent controversial Electoral Act for example. All the young people are talking about electronic transmission of results from the polling unit to the collation center, to the central server of INEC. But it goes beyond that. If you look at that law, it says if you want to contest for the presidency of Nigeria, you must have 10 billion naira, I think 5 billion naira. Doesn’t that already exclude professors, exclude workers, exclude lawyers, and many majority of Nigerians who are not billionaires? So the law is not neutral; it is made by people in the National Assembly who are representing us, but who at the end of the day are representing the bourgeoisie. So that is the nature of law.” Read_More…