Guardian Nigeria
Independent National Electoral Commission, yesterday, came hard on States Independent Electoral Commission (SIECs), describing local council elections, conducted in virtually all the states of the federation, as mere coronation of candidates of the ruling parties.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, gave the verdict when the Chairmen and other executive members of the Forum of State Independent Electoral Commission of Nigeria (FOSIECOM) led by its Chairman, Jossy Eze, visited the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
Declaring that it was time to stop the coronation and conduct proper elections, Yakubu urged state governors to allow SIECs have greater capacity for independent action.
He said while there were legal and financial constraints to the operations of SIEC, their independence did not necessarily draw from statutory or financial provisions alone.
Yakubu said: “Many of the SIECs have no functional offices in the local government areas in their states and cannot recruit their own permanent staff. In some states, SIECs are either not properly constituted, have no security of tenure or their critical functions have been taken over by government officials. Some SIECs are only constituted on the eve of elections and dissolved thereafter. They are also severely under-resourced to the extent that some of them rely on INEC even for basic facilities such as ballot boxes and voting cubicles.
“Consequently, many Nigerians mistake the SIECs for INEC. Indeed, even some of the stakeholders, including candidates for local government elections, call them state INEC. This situation has forced us to reconsider some aspects of our relationship with SIECs. Our support is now largely restricted to the voter register as provided by the Constitution.”
Yakubu explained that INEC could not shoulder its own extensive responsibilities and at the same time extend almost limitless support to other independent electoral commissions for elections outside its mandate across the country from its lean federal budget.
He recalled that over the years, attempts were made to encourage SIECs to maintain their independence, including the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to provide “assistance in the form of training, provision of some facilities, institutionalisation of the culture of planning through the development of a strategic plan, holding regular meetings with stakeholders, encouraging SIECs to participate in our retreats and accrediting their officials to observe our elections. We also established the joint INEC/FOSIECOM consultative Committee headed by a National Commissioner.”
