As part of sanitizing and restoring confidence in the electoral process at the State level and on the heels of amending the constitution, a nonprofit organization and election observer, Yiaga Africa, Tuesday, called on the National Assembly to remove powers conferred on the State Governors to appoint members into the State Independent Electoral Commissions, SIECs.
The call was made by the Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, during a validation meeting on how local government elections are conducted and winners emerge in Nigeria.
Itodo also cautioned that the Bill seeking the creation of an electoral body for local governments would be counterproductive in the electoral system if embraced, rather he called on members of the National Assembly to focus on making sure that financial autonomy for SIECs is assured and effected in the constitution.
Meanwhile, according to the Yiaga Africa boss, his organisation Yiaga is currently working an index for assessing the integrity of local government elections in Nigeria.
He added that the index Yiaga Africa is developing would ensure prevention of all forms of electoral misconduct and sustain transparency, reliability and credibility in Local Government electoral process.
He said: “Most of the elections conducted at states level are sham and cannot pass credible election test and that is due to several challenges at the states independent electoral commission.
“Lack of independence, no financial autonomy, there is disinterest on the part of the people to participate at the local level.
“There is an ongoing constitutional review and we are also opposed to setting up of another approved agency or commission to Conduct local government elections, because the whole concept of local government is to allow states to express and exercise autonomy.
“We need to remove the powers of governors of appoint and the funding of SIECs are released in good time so we have that financial autonomy guaranteed in the constitution and there should be consequences where any state governor tries to violate any process of the constitution.
“These are things we need to do to strengthen SIECs and insulate them from undue political interference because that will deepen the quality of local government elections.
“At Yiaga Africa, we have been working on Local government elections, for about a year, and the Supreme Court judgement is an opportunity to deepen the quality of elections because the stake at the local level is going to be higher.”
Meanwhile, according to the Yiaga Africa boss, his organisation Yiaga is currently working an index for assessing the integrity of local government elections in Nigeria.
He added that the index Yiaga Africa is developing would ensure prevention of all forms of electoral misconduct and sustain transparency, reliability and credibility in Local Government electoral process.
“What Yiaga Africa is doing is to develop a tool that will help citizens and stakeholders to measure the quality of local government elections, there are proposals that we have made on how to strengthen the independence of local government.
“We are totally opposed to the call of scrapping of SIECs, because it defeat the purpose of local government as well as decentralization”, he said.
A former Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Aniodi Ikoiwak, asserted that the constitution outrightly left local governments at the mercy of state governors based on how the constitution framed.
“The framer from day one left local government elections and anything concerning the local government in the hands of the governor. So you will expect the governor to come from heaven to be able to do otherwise.
“The President of Nigeria cannot take the position of INEC into his pocket because the framer of the constitution have looked at it and say let us do something to prevent this from happening, the framer of the constitution left the local government totally on the table of the governor to do whatever he wants to do with it.”
