Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, has called for the scrapping of State Electoral Commissions, saying there were the main impediments to the development of local governments.
Fagbemi stated this at a one-day ‘Discourse on National Nigeria’s Security Challenges and Good Governance At the Local Government Levels” in Abuja on Monday.
The programme with the Theme: ‘Nigeria’s Security Challenges and Good Governance at The Local Government Levels’ was organised by the House of Representatives.
The minister said governors hide under the cover of the inadequacies and lacunas in some sections of the 1999 Constitution to render local governments redundant.
He swaid governors were exploring the weaknesses of Section 7(1); Section 83(3); Section 7(5) and others to impose their candidates on the local governments, adding that these inadequacies made the governors to abuse the rights of local governments and thus deprive people at the grassroots to feel their presence.
Fagbemi said the most prominent abuse of local government was the use of state electoral commissions to impose the local government leaders through sham elections, adding that most Governors only appoint caretaker leadership in their local governments.
According to him, state governors abuse the States/local governments joint accounts through imposition of a fiscal emasculation which has rendered the local governments poor as the governors hold on to their federal allocations.
He therefore called for the scrapping of State Electoral Commissions to allow democracy to take roots in the local governments.
He also called for a robust constitutional amendment that will remove all encumbrances hindering the development of local governments and their ability to fulfill their constitutionally recognized functions.
He said, “To achieve this, many experts have proposed that there is a need for the scrapping of the state independent electoral commission. Their functions and powers should be transferred to the independent national electoral commission because the state independent electoral commission remains an appendage to every incumbent governor. This is perceived as the root cause of the problem of local government administration in Nigeria.”
Fagbemi’s comment comes after he filed a suit against governors at the Supreme Court, on behalf of the Federal Government.
The minister told the Supreme Court to halt the remitting of local government funds to states and to stop the 36 state governments from the disbandment of elected local government chairmen and replacing them with caretaker committees.
