Samuel Ifeanyi Onuigbo is the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, as well as Vice Chairman Globe International. As the representative of the Southeast from the House of Representatives for Technical Committee on Electoral Act 2022, he spoke on the relevance of the electoral legislation to the recent elections as well as lessons for Local Government Polls.
As the representative of the Southeast from the House of Representatives for Technical Committee on Electoral Act 2022, he spoke on the relevance of the electoral legislation to the recent elections as well as lessons for Local Government Polls.is the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, as well as Vice Chairman Globe International.
For any political party to nominate a candidate for election, such a political party must, of course, it put it shall: It says “political party seeking to nominate a candidate for elections under this Act shall hold primaries for aspirants to all elective positions, which shall be monitored by the commission,” in this case, INEC.
And so, that way, I think that has also impacted on the outcome of the elections and provided that, well if you are not satisfied with the outcome, the process of challenging the outcome is also very clear. There is nothing nebulous; there is nothing ambiguous about the provisions of the Act. I know that the council polls are held within the states, and they are often handled by the State Independent Electoral Commissions in line with section 197 of the constitution, which recognises such state executive bodies.
You can see that this runs counter to the practice we are experiencing now, which does not make for transparency, where the governor sits down with a few of his people and selects people they want to be council chairman and councillors. And, once that list comes out, the state electoral commission does not do anything different from the list that the governor had issued.
We do not want to continue with the old order, where resources, massive resources in the 774 Local Governments, are pushed down, if you like, push down the drain, because nobody is held accountable. Where leadership selection is through appointment instead of election. Let the citizens know that there is such a provision in the Electoral Act 2022, that you are not going to continue with the old order, where you write a list and the list you are writing is of Local Government chairmen that will be receiving money from federation account and administering such money without being accountable, but only accountable to his appointed.
It is a simple thing. What accounts for the huge gap between legislation and execution is particularly that at the lower level, at the sub-national level; the governors are very powerful such that even the members of the states’ Houses of Assembly are almost helpless. So, even when they make a law, to say we have made this law, who is going to execute the laws you have made? It is the executive; it is under the governor.
You are working with someone who is supposed to check the activities of the executive, in this case, the office of the Auditor General, working with the public accounts committee in the House of Assembly or at the federal level. How did you feel when some state governors went to court against the President Buhari’s executive order granting autonomy to Local Governments?
So, when they went to court, it was a source of concern to me, because it created the impression that some people do not want fiscal transparency to be built into our system.
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