Local government election result is the most predictable story in Nigeria these days. It is the one story that newspaper editors can cast the headline many hours before “voters” even troop to the polls, if they ever do. In my total 13 years as title editor of four different newspapers, the most challenging time for an editor was on Saturdays when elections were held. Results will not be available until at least the following day and by then, the only story that readers want is election result. Editors tried to get round this dilemma by staying up until past midnight, get an indication of where the wind is blowing and then cast headlines saying, “So-so in the lead.” At least that satisfies some of the curiosity of newspaper readers.
With local government elections in this Republic, editors have an easy time. Results are as predictable as the rise and setting of the sun. All that an editor has to do is to find out which political party is in power in that state, how many local government areas the state has and how many wards there are in the state. With that information in hand, an editor can cast his headline: “So-so party sweeps all chairmanships and all councillorships in So-so state LG polls,” and he will never be wrong.
The latest local election was the one that took place in Osun State at the weekend. As early as Saturday evening, when polling clerks were supposed to be taking result sheets to collation centres for the cumbersome collation and result declaration process to begin, the news was already on the wires that “PDP sweeps all 30 LG Chairmanships, 332 councillors in Osun election.” Some katakata preceded those elections, because Attorney General of the Federation Lateef Fagbemi tried to get Osun State Government to call them off, in view of an Appeal Court order. Fagbemi even said, shockingly, that any state government that dissolves elected local government councils before their tenure is up has committed treason, ostensibly because the 1999 Constitution guarantees democratic governance of local councils.
But Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke, who paused in his dancing in order to pull this one off, rejected Fagbemi’s counsel, brandished an Osogbo High Court order of his own, rejected the Police Commissioner’s warning that there were security threats, ignored efforts by the dissolved [APC] councillors and chairmen to storm the local council secretariats and “regain their mandate,” and went ahead to organize his own local polls, which his party, PDP, swept 100 percent.
Attorney General Fagbemi, who unlike most of his predecessors is non-controversial, may be telling the truth in this matter but, Adeleke must have wondered, why didn’t he tell this truth to at least a dozen state governors who did similar things in their states in the last two years and whose parties swept every available seat on offer? If sacking elected local government councils is treason, why aren’t most state governors in Kirikiri prison right now for having done the same thing? In any case, to call local government chairmen and councillors anywhere in Nigeria “democratically elected” is a bit of a stretch, because State Independent Electoral Commissions [SIECS] are the least credible institutions in this Republic.
Adeleke badly needs control of the LGAs by his own men because he will soon be up for re-election. Colourful dance steps alone are unlikely to get his re-elected, but LGA chairmen and councillors are a very important weapon in his political arsenal. Never mind that he stood on slippery legal terrain because he relied for cover on a High Court order that flew in the face of an Appeal Court ruling. In a way, it was like the June 12 election thirty two years ago that was held in defiance of a [dubious] court order; the prospect of annulment maybe just around the corner.
Let’s leave the matter of SIECs and LGA polls for a moment and move on to another K-leg issue of this Republic. The twin, very sad passings last week of Pan Niger Delta Development Forum [PANDEF] and Ijaw national leader Chief Edwin Clark and of Afenifere leader Chief Ayo Adebanjo presented an occasion to think about the role of ethno-regional groups in the Fourth Republic. We had nothing like Egbe Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Arewa Consultative Forum, Middle Belt Forum or PANDEF in the Second Republic.
The primary instruments of democratic contest are the political parties, which are the only agencies permitted by the Constitution to sponsor candidates for election. While trade unions, mass media, student bodies and other civil society organisations add spice to democratic governance, ethno-regional groups were hardly anticipated when the Constitution was being written. Why were they not there during the Second Republic years, 1979-1983? Apparently because, the political parties of that era were so strong that they left no room for ethnic or regional solidarity outside their confines. How, in 1980, could an NPN member, say Mamman Abubakar Danmusa, sit together with a PRP member, say Aliyu Sabo Bakin Zuwo, in the name of Arewa solidarity? How could any South Western NPN member, for example Chief Adisa Akinloye or High Chief Gabriel Akin-Deko, ever find common cause with a UPN member, say Senator Abraham Adesanya or Chief Ebenezer Babatope, in the name of Afenifere solidarity? The political parties of the Fourth Republic however allow much space to be filled by ethno-regional groups; members of different political parties come together in ethnic solidarity, which they place over and above loyalty to their political parties. Which is which? Is it the weakness of the Fourth Republic political parties that created space for these groups, or is it the power of the regional groups that weakened the political parties?
There was this report that All Progressives Congress [APC] is about to hold National Caucus and National Executive Committee [NEC] meetings this week for the first time in more than two years, when their Constitution expects a NEC meeting every three months and even a National Convention every other year. One newspaper report even said “President Tinubu approved the dates” for the meetings. Where was it written in the party’s constitution that a president must approve the date of NEC meetings?
APC’s situation is slightly better than the main opposition PDP’s, which has been trying since 2023 to hold a NEC meeting. PDP’s dilemma is without precedent in Nigeria’s political history, a minister in a ruling party cabinet holding the main opposition party by the jugular, its Acting National Chairman allegedly allied to him, along with many other members of the National Working Committee, while the party’s Governors’ Forum frets and huffs and puffs. Back in the Second Republic, the most powerful minister in President Shehu Shagari’s cabinet was thought to be Alhaji Umaru Dikko, but even he never had control of UPN, NPP, PRP or GNPP. At best he engineered crises and defections in some of the opposition parties as part of NPN’s strategy for the 1983 elections, but nothing like the decapitation we are witnessing today.
SIECs, ethno-regional groupings and disoriented political parties apart, another K-leg of the Fourth Republic is “constituency projects,” a hot topic now that Federal and state budgets are being passed all over the country. Invented around 2001, it has now gone haywire; every National Assembly member is allocated some billions of naira worth of personal projects, to be inserted in a public agency of his choice, often without any regard to the agency’s own goals, to determine the contractor, and in many cases for the funds to be siphoned away “without commensurate results,” to borrow Umaru Yar’adua’s phrase. I had been reading since primary school of the American system of “pork barrel projects,” whereby an influential senator or congressman can insert a project into a bill even when it has no link at all to the bill. Once it is passed and the President signs the bill into law, the project must be executed. I do not however think the MP dictates the contractor or siphons away the money. I think doing away with this system of constituency projects will save Nigeria more money than tax reform or even restructuring.
Not many people will like to hear this, but are these Regional Development Commissions a good idea? What is it that Federal, state and local governments cannot do, that we must institute another tier of government to plan and execute projects for the regions? What prevents state governments from collaborating to solve regional security, water, electricity, out-of-school children, joint industrial, environmental problems or disease epidemics? Now that every geopolitical zone has a Regional Development Commission, is the plan to later upgrade these to regional governments, so that restructuring will arrive through the back door?
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is expected to start by the end of this week. Especially in the Northern states, expect a big scramble for Ramadan feeding. In these hard times, it is not a bad idea to help people with food. Afterall, what is the use of all the government’s macroeconomic policies and mega projects if we are not alive to enjoy the fruits? Trouble is, so many unsavoury things accompany the [politically motivated] Ramadan feeding programs. This week, folks will be running from pillar to post, to the houses of every legislator, every commissioner, every local government chairman and councillor, every party chieftain, and to the house of everyone suspected of nursing a 2027 political ambition. When a well-connected party youth winger collects “palliatives” from many houses, some of it will end up in the market. Nor is human greed ever satiable; I once saw a man park his old model Mercedes Benz 200 car in front of a government-sponsored Ramadan feeding centre and join the queue to collect free pap and akara.
Then there are the mass weddings in the North, an invention of the Fourth Republic. Sure, it helps many widows and divorcees, since in our society, marriage is often the best insurance for poor women. Trouble is, almost any man who submits himself to a government-sponsored mass wedding program is unlikely to have the means to look after a wife thereafter. The danger is therefore real that when the kind-hearted Governor organizes another mass wedding this time next year, our “bridegroom” will be back in the same queue, to be joined with another recycled “bride.”
