The Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), has urged the Federal Government to scrap state electoral commissions, News About Nigeria reports.
He made this call while speaking at a one-day ‘Discourse on National Nigeria’s Security Challenges and Good Governance at the Local Government Levels’ in Abuja on Monday.
He noted that the existence of the commissions is the main reason why the development of local governments has not been able to amount to anything reasonable.
While speaking in the programme titled “Nigeria’s Security Challenges and Good Governance at the Local Government Levels,” organised by the House of Representatives, Fagbemi opined that governors have exploited the shortcomings and gaps in certain sections of the 1999 Constitution to weaken and make local governments ineffective.
According to him, the most prevalent form of abuse in local government is the use of state electoral commissions for what he described as sham elections and governors’ preference for appointing caretaker leaders in local governments.
“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,” he stated.
He therefore appealed to the federal government to execute the elimination of state electoral commissions and maintained that this would foster true democratic practices within local governments.
