The Saturday, February 12 election in the six Area Councils of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) will be a litmus test for the clamour and attempts by the National Assembly to make the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conduct local government polls across the country.
INEC, apart from when Nigeria first returned to democratic governance in 1999, conducts the election for the third tier of government only in the FCT while State Electoral Commissions (SIECs) established by the first set of governors then, handle the polls at that level.
The governors then did not act in aberration as their actions were in conformity with Section 197 of the Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria which guaranteed the establishment of SIECs.
The law of the land spelt out SIECs function which are to have power to amongst others: “organise, undertake and supervise all elections to local councils within the state.”
In line with the aphorism, “He that pays the piper calls the tune,” the SIECs which are appendages of the States Executives have always acted to the whims and caprices of sitting governors each time local government elections are held.
For the above reason, each time election into local government council is conducted from the early 2000s to date, the party in power in such a state wins almost, if not all chairmanship and Councilorship seats.
Instances of what many consider as an anomaly which has weakened the local government system abound as recent as 2021 and may continue this year as some states such as Benue conduct local government elections in the first quarter.
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Some of the instances last year include, Sokoto State Local Government council election where the ruling party there, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), won all the 23 chairmanship and 244 councillorship seats; PDP also cleared all the chairmanship and councillorship seats in the council election conducted in Rivers State, and the result of the council elections in Oyo State was 100percent for the PDP.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) too, had a field day in Jigawa State where it cleared all the 27 chairmanships and 286 out of the 287 councillorship seats. In Lagos, the party won the chairmanship seats in all the 20 local government areas and 37 local council development areas as well as 375 out of the 377 councillorship seats; it cleared all the 17 local government areas in Ogun and Plateau States.
There was, however, a little bit radical departure in Kaduna State wherein Kaura Local Government, the opposition PDP defeated the ruling APC which also lost in the polling unit of Governor Nasir El-rufai due to the adoption of electronic voting and the strong opposition in the southern part of the state worst hit by banditry.
The recurring decimal of manipulation of local government area elections in the country has ignited the clamour and efforts to amend the Constitution to allow INEC take over the conduct of polls at that tier of government to instill some level of sanity, hence the Commission would not be directly under governors.
This call recently came from the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), an umbrella body of workers in the 774 local government areas who asked INEC to take over the conduct of elections at the third tier of government across Nigeria.
President of the union, Ambali Olatunji had at a press conference in Uyo, Akwa-Ibom State, attributed the near-collapse state of local governments in Nigeria to the mode of the emergence of council chairmen, whom he said emerge through coronation, appointment and promotion, devoid of any form of credibility.
“We clamour for political autonomy for Local Government whereby Independent National Electoral Commission will be conducting the Local government election.
“The creation of state electoral commission has brought in a lot of abuse and lack of transparency in the conduct of LG elections. What they are doing now is not an election; it is a coronation, appointment, and promotion of political jobbers and political cronies into the administration of Local Government, thereby creating an avenue to siphon local government resources.
“That is why NULGE clamours for the conduct of credible and acceptable Democratic election at the LG level. If the process is thorough, the leadership would be a leadership voluntarily elected by the people that would be accountable to the people, not to the state government,” he said.
Beyond the calls, there is currently a Bill before the House of Representatives to amend the Constitution to give INEC power to conduct local government elections in the country.
Sponsored by Dachung Bagos (PDP, Plateau) the Bill proposed Section 7(1e) which reads: “An election to the office of the chairman shall be held on a date to be appointed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).”
If passed and signed into law, the proposed Section 7(1) e will obliterate the SIECs, as the commissions will no longer have any role, since the only responsibility they have is conducting elections into the local governments.
The confidence reposed in INEC as the last hope for credible local government elections in Nigeria would be brought to test on Saturday, depending on the outcome of the FCT area council polls and the Commission’s role to ensure that it is not always business as usual with elections at that level of government.
INEC too had at several fora, assured residents of FCT and Nigerians that it would ensure the credibility of the process to give all parties equal opportunities to emerge victorious.
Chairman of the Commission, Mahmood Yakubu at stakeholders meeting held last week at the instance of the FCT Minister, Mohammed Bello, said INEC would protect the integrity of the process and deploy technology, including Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to enhance credibility.
“Our eyes are on all our officials, be they ad hoc or regular staff, to ensure that they strictly abide by the rules. All parties, candidates and their supporters should do the same. No one will benefit from the disruption of the process or other acts of bad bahaviour. Let the voters in the FCT choose their leaders in a free, fair and peaceful contest,” Yakubu said.
The INEC boss further stressed that: “In terms of grassroots democracy, FCT is a leading light in Nigeria with its regular and well-conducted Area Council elections. Each political party has the chance of winning an election in the FCT. Let the 2022 Area Council election be the beacon for a peaceful and credible 2023 general election.”
As good as INEC assurance may sound, the FCT Area Council polls which the Commission conducts has not been devoid of phenomenon of the party of the Minister who superintendents over Territory on behalf of the President winning most or all the chairmanship and councillorship seats.
In the last FCT Area Council polls in 2019 for instance, APC, the party of President Muhammadu Buhari and FCT Minister, Bello, won five out of the six chairmanships while the PDP got one chairmanship and a handful of councilors.
Again, APC and PDP are at daggers drawn to test might in the Saturday poll with each of them this time deploying many of their governors, lawmakers and other top notch for the electoral battle.
The PDP appointed a 34-member campaign council, chaired by Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State with Governors Seyi Makinde of Oyo as Secretary; Nyesom Wike of Rivers and Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of Sokoto; former Senate President, David Mark, immediate past governor of Benue State, Senator Gabriel Suswam, amongst others as members.
Similarly, the ruling APC raised a 133-member Campaign Committee which include 16 serving governors and 12 federal ministers as well as members of National Assembly for the same election.
Be that as it may, Auwal Rafsanjani, chairman Transition Monitoring Group( TMG) and Executive Director Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre ( CISLAC), said the FCT election is a case study for a truly free, fair and credible council election to further make the case for amendment of Section 197 of the 1999 Constitution to let INEC take over local government polls.
Rafsanjani in an interview with BusinessDay said that the proponents and supporters of INEC to conduct council polls in Nigeria are watching, same as those who are bent against such developments.
“To this end, INEC must prove itself to not just to the citizens and residents of the FCT, but to every Nigerian who desires local government developments in the country as the local council system is very central to the welfare and well-being of Nigerians.
“While Section 7 (1) of the 1999 Constitution guarantees the constitution of local government by democratically elected local government councils, it is absolutely true that the local government councils in Nigeria are a direct subject of the state governors, and this can be attributed again, to constitution which puts the local councils under the control of the state governments.
“Many states in the country have been seen to wield this power to the extent of truncating the tenure of the democratically elected council chairmen and councillors and replaced them with members of the ruling political party in the state, as caretaker Committees,” he said.
Christian Okeke, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, observed that the issues that confront INEC in conducting credible elections in other places are not different from those it is likely to face in the FCT, but he urged the Commission to leave above board.
According to him, the commission cannot vouch for the integrity and interest of those ad-hoc staff it usually employs to assist it midwife credible polls, hence many of those ad-hoc staff approach election duties with pre-determined interests which run contrary to the independence mantra of the commission.
Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), said though there have been heightened complaints against irregularities in local government elections, INEC should not be made to take over as that would over-burden the Commission, saying that the SIECs should be given intuitional strength to operate.
“The state governors appoint the chairpersons and commissioners of SIEC, making the SIECs institutionally weak and susceptible to appointing authority. This has affected the quality of elections at the local level, leading to the popular assertion that local government elections are ‘mere selections, not elections.
“For us at the CDD, the move to vest the power to conduct the local government election within the purview of INEC will undermine the democratic principle of democracy that promotes ‘Devolution of Power’ as spelt out by the Constitution for the Federal Government, State and local government jurisdictions. At this critical time, the conversation is centred on local government autonomy and the creation of a State policing system,” Hassan said.
