Supreme Court has made Local Governments juicy by the last decision granting financial autonomy of the Local Governments. It is therefore not unexpected to see political gladiators fighting tooth and nail to emerge victorious in Local Government elections.

While I will not comment on the various pending cases in Court, we can agree that local government elections need serious house cleaning. Unlike National elections conducted by INEC that different political parties get to win elections to National Assembly, House of Assembly and even Governorship, Local Government elections is usually a one ruling party affair. The Governor dictates to the State Electoral body everything.

Little wonder that the Governor of Rivers appears to speak for the RSIEC much more than the RSIEC Chairman. The media is also not paying enough attention to RSIEC which ought to be independent of the Governor and in charge of the process. The state electoral bodies must secure their independence and be completely divorced or insulated from the influence of Governors. It is important to begin a proper interrogation of the capacity, transparency and neutrality of State Electoral bodies.

Where it is not possible to guarantee independence of the State Electoral bodies, then there is no point allowing puppets of the state Governments to continue to just announce names of Local Government Chairmen without conducting any transparent or credible elections.

The current judicial remedies available for complaints over Local Government elections are also ineffective. The Tribunals are mostly setup by state governments and government loyalist are chosen to man the Tribunals. Since, this power was given to State Governments in 1999, we have not witnessed any serious Local Government election Tribunal. I can’t remember even 1 Local Government election Tribunal that has set aside or nullified or find any wrong with any Local Government election. This shows, no serious judicial audit is done after Local Government elections.

These are all areas that are by themselves screaming for urgent reforms.