By Jude Atupulazi
On September 28, just days away, the Anambra State Government under Gov Chukwuma Soludo, will conduct the third Local Council Elections in the History of the state. The first of such elections were conducted in 1999 under the late Gov Chinwoke Mbadinuju Regime. The second came under the Peter Obi Regime in 2014. Since then there have been no such elections, a development that had triggered many protests and calls for such elections to be contested.
Indeed, many opposition parties held it against Soludo, reminding him of his failed campaign promise of conducting local council polls within six months of being sworn in. Civil society groups were not left out in the bombardment and they kept lamenting the democracy dividends being lost by the grassroots owing to the non-conduct of the said elections.
I never for once joined in the calls because I knew conducting such elections would change virtually nothing from the way things are being run presently in the third tier of government. While it is true that such elections, if conducted, are supposed to usher in better grassroots development, such will however be possible where the third tier of government is detached from the apron strings of the state government.
Indeed, the general thing in the country is that state governments use local government funds to do their projects and other things. Simply put, the money accruing to the third tier of government in Nigeria represents the oxygen with which the state governments breathe. And that is why state governments are reluctant to see elections conducted in that tier which will supposedly give it autonomy. But again that is in an ideal setting.
In states where such elections have been conducted, it is still business as usual as the governors simply ensure that their yes men are ”selected” rather than elected. Such yes men are made to do whatever the governors tell them but with bigger take home pay for acquiescing to the demands of the governors.
For instance, in Anambra State, the local government chairmen usually get about N5m and above monthly of the local government allocations from the state governor who then appropriates the rest after parting with salaries for council workers and transition members.
The chairmen are then left to raise money from some revenue windows left for them for minor projects. Indeed, under this arrangement, the councils cannot do any major project without the state knowing and approving.
You can now see why the idea of perpetuating this kind of arrangement is music to the ears of the state government. It is not just in Anambra State, mind you. But recently, the National Assembly came up with a bill seeking to stop allocations to states that had not conducted elections in the third tier of government.
The states know what that will mean and thus those which have not conducted the elections are now hurrying to do so and Anambra State is one of them.
This explains the obvious hurry by the Soludo Administration to conduct the elections which it had hitherto not shown any inclination of conducting. But in conducting such, it is mindful of the need to retain the status quo in terms of cornering a large chunk of money accruing to the local governments from the Federation Account.
It knows that it will be suicidal to conduct the elections in such a way as to allow other parties to win as that will ensure that the state can no longer put its paws in local government money. It is also mindful of the need not to make the emasculation of opposition parties and their candidates very obvious.
Thus, it exploited the short time left between the passing of the bill into law and the conduct of the elections to deal with opposing parties. That was why the announcement of the date for the council polls came like a bomb. Of course while opposing parties had no inkling of what was coming, the APGA-led State Government knew all the time that it would conduct the elections and had made adequate plans which, simply put, is to use those already in the councils as appointees to run the elections.
Opposition parties have no such luxury because they have no time to go through the long process of nomination of candidates for elections. Thus, they are crying foul, despite shouting for long that they wanted the state government to conduct council polls. How Soludo must be secretly laughing at them. That’s part of the powers of incumbency.
But then, there was the little business of smoothening the path for conducting elections that will see APGA making a clean sweep of the polls technically.
The Anambra State House of Assembly thus, had to amend the State Electoral (Amendment No 3) Law 2024. It even had to amend it many times: up to three times.
But then in hurrying to smoothen the path for the ruling party, the House of Assembly seemed to have overlooked the aspect of the Electoral Law that specifies giving a 150-day notice prior to such elections and now opposition political parties are latching on to that to make a case against the conduct of the elections in court.
Both the Labour Party and the All Progressives Congress, APC, have gone to court to challenge what they have described as an illegality. They are also citing an earlier judgement on a similar matter by a higher court. On this premise, the probability of the elections being stopped is high. If not, the outcome may still be nullified but we shall see.
For now, it appears it’s only APGA and the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, that will contest in the elections as nothing much has been heard from PDP concerning its position. But the absence of two of the major parties has for sure cast a blight on the exercise.
Nevertheless, I think the LP and PDP have done the right thing to walk away from the elections which will only have one result: an overwhelming APGA victory as the party in power.
Recent local council elections in Nigeria have always favoured the ruling parties which merely allocate positions to their members. If they feel magnanimous enough, they may concede some councillorship slots to any opposition party they like, to give it a semblance of a genuine contest but that has been very rare.
Really, I consider it foolish for any member of an opposition party to waste money in the guise of contesting local government elections, unless such a person merely wants to announce himself to public consciousness.
The results of the coming elections therefore, are already what we call a fait accompli. Perhaps, only those who have little to do will show up on election day to go through the motions of voting. Good luck to the beneficiaries.
The purported sack of Paul Nwosu, Information Commissioner last Tuesday afternoon news filtered in that Sir Paul Nwosu, Commissioner for Information, had been sacked by the Anambra State Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo. One particular newspaper report had it that journalists in the state were jubilant over the sack, as Nwosu was never friendly to them.
Well, I don’t wish to be part of the jubilant group because I can’t see anything Nwosu could have done to make journalists happy when his boss has shown that he is the worst governor in terms of government/media relations. In short, never in the History of this state has any governor shown much disdain for journalists.
Not that I’m surprised because I had seen it coming. I don’t want to go into details but suffice it to say that the state government has been grumbling about bad press from the media but then any governor that shuts down its own major media outlet (National Light) should not expect the independent press to dance to his tunes.
It is not as if any media outfit goes out of its way to fight the government, anyway, no. But you know that in this part of the world, any time you say things as they are, the establishment will term you an enemy. But then, we can’t all be clapping for the government while neglecting its flaws and if being objective in praising and condemning in equal measure amounts to hostility, so be it.
Nwosu could not have said or done anything the governor did not want, especially when the governor in question is one that is reputed to be hard to please and to know it all. Perhaps the best thing would have been for Nwosu to quietly walk away as I was told he did by handing in his resignation letter.
But in the absence of an official statement from Nwosu, we may never know which is which: whether he was sacked or he resigned, but one thing I’m sure is that Nwosu will be breathing a sigh of relief for finally extricating himself from the shackles of control. Some people are not easy to work under.