July 17, 2003
Local Council Reform: What Approach?
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A few weeks ago, President Olusegun Obasanjo constituted and inaugurated a high-powered technical committee on local government reform, headed by the Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Umaru Ndayako. This committee was mandated to review the structure of governance at the local councils and to find solution to high cost of governance as well as prohibitive cost of electioneering campaigns in Nigeria.
It follows therefore that the much-awaited elections into the local councils is not going to take place after all; moreso as the state independent electoral commissions of the 36 states of the federation have earlier met and resolved that they are neither prepared nor equipped to conduct the local elections as scheduled.
The news of the planned reform of the local councils was received with mixed feelings. No doubt, the local councils since inception of the present dispensation were beset with problems of non-performance as well as fragmentation into smaller areas that were not economically viable but then the issue is seen as one of the many ills bothering on the structure of Nigeria which needed to be addressed at a conference of all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. The approach of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) led federal government was therefore found to be unacceptable. Popular opinion seems to be against a piecemeal restructuring of Nigeria.
It is against this background that one needs to commend the step taken last week by a group of opposition parties consisting of the All Nigeria Peoples’ Party (ANPP) and ten other political parties. The group instituted a law suit at the Federal High Court Abuja, challenging the decision of the PDP led federal government opting for the reform of the local government councils in Nigeria and postponing elections into the local councils.
The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 guaranteed the system of local government by democratically elected local government councils and enjoins all states of the federation to ensure their existence under a law, which provides for their establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions. This constitutional provision thus makes the issue sacrosanct, and not subject to the whims and caprices of the federal government. In other words, the federal government is not at liberty to toy with the issue of local government and it is clearly unconstitutional to so do.
In as much as the reform of the local councils may be desirable, it should not be at the expense of the practice of democracy in Nigeria. If elections at the federal and state levels could not be put on hold to carry out expedient restructuring in the polity, then putting the local elections on hold under whatever guise is unjustifiable.
CRP therefore calls on the federal government and the electoral bodies to revisit the issue and remove every hurdle to the immediate conduct of the local council elections, which is long over due. The local elections have been delayed for more than one year already, and this trend will in no way augur well for the consolidation of democracy in Nigeria.
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