YIAGA Africa has called on the National Assembly to remove the powers vested on state governors to make appointments into State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs).

Yiaga Executive Director, Samson Itodo, who made the call, yesterday, in Abuja during a meeting on the state of local government election in Nigeria,
also urged the lawmakers to ensure that financial autonomy for SIECs was guaranteed in the constitution.

Noting that the body was totally opposed to a bill recently introduced by the House for the creation of an electoral body for local government, Itodo noted that the development, if allowed to mature, would defeat the purpose of local government as well as decentralisation.

He disclosed that Yiaga was currently developing an index for assessing the integrity of local government elections in Nigeria to prevent electoral misconduct and preserve the credibility of elections at the local governments.

According to him, the index can be instrumental in advocating for and designing electoral reforms to improve election administration, enhance election security.promote civic education and strengthen electoral institutions to uphold the values of free, fair and transparent elections at the local level.

He said: “We need to remove the powers of governors of appointing and that the funding of SIECs are released in good time so we have that financial autonomy guaranteed in the constitution and there should be consequences where any state governor tries to violate any process of the constitution.

“These are things we need to do to strengthen SIECs and insulate them from undue political interference because that will deepen the quality of local council elections.

“At Yiaga Africa, we have been working on local government elections, for about a year, and the Supreme Court judgment is an opportunity to deepen the quality of elections, because the stake at the local level is going to be higher.”

He added: “What Yiaga Africa is doing is to develop a tool that will help citizens and stakeholders to measure the quality of local government elections, there are proposals that we have made on how to strengthen the independence of local government, we are totally opposed to the call of scrapping of SIECs, because it defeats the purpose of local government as well as decentralisation.”

On his part, a former commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Aniodi Ikoiwak, who blamed the development on the framers of the constitution that left local governments at the mercy of state governors, expressed worries that governors might refrain from funding local government elections due to the autonomy granted them by the Supreme Court.

“The framer of Nigeria’s constitution did not make any situation where any other person will have control.

“The framer from day one left local government elections and anything concerning the local government in the hands of the governor. So you will expect the governor to come from heaven to be able to do otherwise.

“The President of Nigeria cannot take the position of INEC into his pocket because the framer of the constitution have looked at it and say let us do something to prevent this from happening, the framer of the constitution left the local government totally on the table of the governor to do whatever he wants to do with it.”