IRIN Focus on local government crisis

When the three-year tenure of Nigeria’s 774 local government councils lapsed at the end of May, new elected officials should have taken their place. However, no new councillors have been voted into office. In fact, it seems increasingly doubtful that local government polls will be held on 10 August as had been announced, and this has raised fears of a prolonged crisis in the country’s third tier of government. Ahead of crucial general elections in the first quarter of next year, analysts believe the way local council polls are managed will determine the success or failure of an electoral transition prone to violence. "Key political actors aiming for higher national and state offices believe they need to take control of local governments to pave their way to victory," political analyst Remi Odubona told IRIN. "This is why the local council polls have assumed an unusual importance, which may even become inimical to the country’s political stability." Under the 1999 Constitution, which paved the way for an end to more than 15 years of brutal military misrule, local government councils were assigned three-year terms, while other elective offices received four-year mandates. An electoral bill passed by the federal legislature last year sought a harmonised four-year term for all elected officials and obtained the assent of President Olusegun Obasanjo. However, governors of Nigeria’s 36 states, alleging interference in what they considered the legislative preserve of states in a federal system, filed a suit challenging the electoral law at the Supreme Court. A unanimous ruling late in March gave victory to the states and overruled the federal legislature. Elections could not follow immediately because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had neither revised the electoral register nor processed the applications of new political parties. A compromise decision agreed by Obasanjo and the 36 state governors was to postpone to August local elections initially scheduled for 18 May, so as to give INEC time to update the voters’ register and admit new parties into the process. In place of the departed local governments a hotchpotch of arrangements have been put in place. In a majority of states, governors appointed "transition committees" to oversee the affairs of the councils pending elections. In several other states, sole administrators were given control of the councils. In yet others, the most senior civil servants in each council were directed to take control. In one state, southeastern Akwa Ibom, the state legislature passed a law extending the tenure of the councils and councillors until the elections. In the northern state of Zamfara, where sole administrators were appointed by the governor, four council chairmen refused to vacate their seats. They accused the governor, a member of the All People’s Party (APP), of reappointing former chairmen from his party while leaving out those from their own People’s Democratic Party (which controls the federal government). In the meantime, the business of local governments across the country has virtually ground to a halt. In most states employees of local councils were being owed months' wages, road building and other public works have been halted pending the resolution of the crisis. Hopes that the council polls would be held as scheduled on 10 August have been doused by the fact that no concrete steps have been taken so far to revise the voters’ register. Contracts have not been awarded by INEC for the printing of voters' cards, and while July was chosen for the exercise, no definite date has been announced. Obasanjo’s opponents have accused him of manipulating the electoral commission to delay the local polls for his own political ends. "I do not believe that the local government elections would take place in August as planned," Asuquo Nya of the opposition APP told reporters last week. "Information at our disposal says Obasanjo will not allow it to take place." He said since council chairmen and councillors would be among the delegates to choose presidential candidates in the various parties, Obasanjo would be disadvantaged should the polls take place now. "There is this fear that the Alliance for Democracy will sweep the polls in the southwest (Obasanjo’s home region) and this would not augur well for him in his re-election bid," Nya said. Obasanjo won the presidency in 1999, but did not do well in his home region, controlled by AD. With his former backers in other regions of the country in apparent revolt, it is believed he would need a support base in the southwest more than ever before to make a realistic bid for re-election. For their part, three new political parties registered by INEC for the coming polls have called for the postponement of the local council election to December. They have argued that they need at least six months to grow firm roots and be able to compete with the other parties on level terms. But the prospect of electoral chaos has increased further with a threat by the States Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECS) to conduct the local government polls on 10 August "with or without a revised voters’ register". At the end of a meeting of their representatives from five southern states last week, the SIECS announced they had filed a suit to compel INEC to release the existing voters’ register to them. Their spokesman, Stevenson Emejuaiwe, declared that the states would go ahead with the polls even if their court action failed. Since Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, elections conducted by elected governments have generally been dogged by disputes and political violence. This has usually provided a pretext for the military to seize power in order to restore stability. "For the current democratic experiment to survive, Obasanjo’s government needs to conduct successful elections at all levels," analyst Ike Onyekwere told IRIN. "But the signs are ominous. Because if the government does not get it right with the local elections, it will be difficult to get it right with the rest."