Your Lawmaker Is Not Performing. Here Is the Exact Process to Recall Them. [Test 3]

Most Nigerians know it is possible to recall a member of the National Assembly. Very few know how. The recall process exists in the Constitution — Section 69 for the House of Representatives, Section 110 for the Senate — but it has never been successfully completed in Nigeria’s democratic history. That is partly because it is genuinely difficult, and partly because most people do not know where to begin.

Here is what the process actually requires.

Step one: The petition

A recall begins with a petition to the Independent National Electoral Commission. That petition must be signed by more than half of all registered voters in the constituency the lawmaker represents. Not half of those who voted in the last election. Not half of active voters. Half of everyone registered.

This is a deliberately high threshold. If your federal constituency has 200,000 registered voters, you need signatures from more than 100,000 of them. Each signature must include the voter’s name, voter registration number, and polling unit.

Step two: INEC verification

Once the petition is submitted, INEC is required to verify the signatures within 30 days. It must confirm that signatories are genuine registered voters in the constituency and that they have not been forged or duplicated. If INEC is satisfied that the threshold has been met, it proceeds to the next stage.

Step three: The referendum

If the signatures are verified, INEC conducts a referendum in the constituency within 90 days. Registered voters are asked a single question: should this lawmaker be recalled? If more than half of registered voters in the constituency vote yes, the lawmaker is recalled and their seat is declared vacant.

Why it has never worked

The 50% threshold at both the signature and referendum stage is the primary obstacle. Nigerian constituencies are large, voter registration data is not always clean or accessible, and organising a grassroots signature drive at the scale required demands resources and coordination that most civil society groups do not have.

There have been attempts — most notably against some senators and house members over the years — but none have cleared the signature verification stage. INEC has in some instances found that submitted signatures fell below the required threshold or contained irregularities.

What this means for you

The recall process is not designed to be easy. It is designed to be a last resort, not a routine political tool. But its existence matters. It means your lawmaker is not insulated from accountability for the full four years of their term. It means organised, documented, and persistent civic action has a formal channel.

If you are in a constituency where you believe this process is worth attempting, the starting point is your state’s INEC office, a copy of the register of voters for your constituency, and a coalition of people committed enough to collect signatures at scale.

The constitution gives you the mechanism. Whether it works depends on whether enough people use it.