Faisal Salisu DambattaA non-profit Civil Society Organization, YIAGA Africa, has described local governments’ elections in Nigeria as electoral coronations.
The Executive Director of the organization, Samson Itodo, made this statement on Monday, while responding to questions during an interview on ‘Sunrise Daily’, a programme on Channels Television.
“Let me reiterate a point that YIAGA Africa has made consistently. All the local government elections that held before the Supreme Court’s judgment and after the Supreme Court’s judgment were nothing but a travesty of electoral democracy.
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“Those elections, virtually all of them, ran foul of provisions of the law. In other words, they violated provisions of the Electoral Act, and if you challenge the legality of those elections in court, I doubt if all of them will meet the test.
“The second point is the local government elections and what happens at the local government level is nothing but electoral coronation. They are not elections because the state electoral commissions are not given the independence to function. The operational independence is subject to the approval of the governor,” he said.
