I was shocked to learn that the Nigerian Senate is planning to establish a federal agency for the conduct of local government elections. The bill, sponsored by Senator Sani Musa (All Progressives Congress, Niger East), is titled, “Local Government Independent Electoral Commission (Establishment) Bill, 2024 (SB. 531).” It passed the first reading at the plenary on Thursday, July 18, 2024.

The draft bill read in part, “To establish the National Independent Local Government Electoral Commission responsible for conducting elections to the office of the local government chairman and councillors, and any other matter thereof to do with local government as a third tier of government. The National Independent Local Government Electoral Commission is hereby established as an autonomous body mandated to organise, oversee, and conduct elections for the offices of local government chairman and councillors across all states.”

The proposed legislation listed the functions and powers of NILGEC to include the conduct of free, fair, and transparent elections for local government chairmen and councillors. Other functions are “to prepare and maintain an accurate and up-to-date voter register; to ensure voter education and public awareness regarding the electoral process; to set and enforce electoral guidelines and regulations for local government elections; to recruit and train electoral officers and staff for efficient election management; to monitor and supervise all electoral activities and processes; and to investigate and adjudicate electoral disputes and grievances.”

The bill indicated that NILGEC shall consist of a chairperson and six commissioners, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. It read, “The chairperson and commissioners shall serve for a term of five years, renewable once.” On its independence and autonomy, it stated that “NILGEC shall operate independently, free from external influence and interference. The commission shall have its own budget, approved by the National Assembly, to ensure financial independence.”

On the electoral offences and penalties, it explained that NILGEC should define and enforce penalties for electoral offences, including but not limited to voter fraud, ballot stuffing, and electoral violence. Offenders shall be prosecuted and punished in accordance with the laws of the land. NILGEC shall collaborate with other relevant government agencies, security forces, and civil society organisations to ensure a secure and credible electoral process. This bill is coming barely a week after the Supreme Court granted autonomy to the local governments.

There are several things wrong with this initiative. First, there are existing State Independent Electoral Commissions established by section 197(b) of the 1999 Constitution. Qualification of members of the SIEC is contained in section 200 (1)(a) which states that “no persons shall be qualified for appointment as a member of any of the bodies (i.e. State Executive Bodies) aforesaid if  he is not qualified or if he is disqualified for election as a member of a House of Assembly provided that a member of any of the said bodies shall not be required to belong to a political party and, in the case of the State independent Electoral Commission, he shall not be a member of a political party.” Some of the aforementioned functions listed for the proposed NILGEC are already being performed by SIECs in the last 25 years.

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It is true that there are serious concerns that the quality of elections being conducted by SIECs does not largely reflect the wishes of the people in the LGs who see the polls as mere coronation of the preferred candidates of the governors in the state. Be that as it may, the solution to the challenges of credible elections at the LG level is not to have another centralised body established for the sole purpose of conducting LG elections as currently being proposed by the National Assembly. The antidote lies in strengthening the SIECs the same way the Independent National Electoral Commission was strengthened in the 2010 constitutional amendments and the legislation that birthed the 2010 Electoral Act. What is necessary is for SIECs to be granted administrative and financial autonomy like INEC.

It is important to note that Nigeria is a federation and should not be run like a unitary system which is antithetical to the spirit and letter of federalism. As I submitted on Monday, July 22, 2024, on Law FM 103.9, Lagos; in a federation, power is decentralised and not the other way round. Because of the unpleasant experiences Nigeria had in the First Republic, the framers of the 1979 Constitution decided to centralise political parties and security, among others. Today, many of the national parties will fare better if they limit their operation to the states or LGs. In a similar fashion, having realised our folly of centralising policing and security, we are now reconsidering the establishment of state police. We have the State High Court, State Civil Service Commission, and State Road Traffic Agencies. Even correctional centres have been moved from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list; it does no harm to leave SIECs and just ensure that they have the requisite administrative and financial autonomy.

To my mind, the proposed NILGEC will be a drain on the country’s meagre resources. To be efficient, the new commission will have to run a parallel structure with what INEC currently has. That is, they will have to have offices in the Federal Capital Territory, the 36 states and 768 local government areas. That is if INEC will have to continue to conduct polls to the six Abuja Area Councils; otherwise, this new body will also have to establish a separate Abuja office. All the itemised functions of NILGEC are already being performed by INEC. It would therefore have been more reasonable to propose to scrap SIECs and transfer their functions to INEC. That is what the Justice Muhammadu Uwais Presidential Committee on Electoral Reform of 2008 recommended.

It doesn’t make sense at all to want to implement Steve Oronsaye’s report on the merger of Ministries, Departments and Agencies and at the same time create another huge bureaucracy like NILGEC. It is also for a similar reason that I am against the recent establishment of the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development.

If there is no executive interference from the governors and there is administrative and financial autonomy that ensures that SIECs are well resourced, we will start to see a marked improvement in the conduct of local government elections.  NILGEC is a misadventure. The National Assembly should assist SIECs to wrestle their administrative and financial autonomy from the governors by amending the relevant sections of the Nigerian Constitution to effect this.