Kaduna: Time to conduct LG election

In Nigeria since the inception of democracy, state governors have little respect for the conduct of local government election. Constitutionally, local government election is vested in the hands of state governors. Most of the local governments in Nigeria are being run by interim management committees against the 1999 constitution provision. Governor Nasir El Rufai is among the state governors that are yet to conduct the local government election in his state. The governor during his campaign promised to conduct the local government election within three months in power. In 2016, the state government is said to have budgeted the sum of 3.5 billion naira for the exercise. Two years after, the governor has failed to keep his promise.

While neighbouring states of Kebbi and Sokoto have since conducted their own, Kaduna state has not fixed time for the exercise and has cited the case of court order and lack of state electoral umpire preparedness. It surprises many Kaduna indigenes and admirers of governor El Rufai to realise that as an advocate of constitutional democracy, the governor can not conduct local government election in spite of repeated assurances by him. In the last two years, the people of grassroots have been robbed off of development presence in their domains. While federal allocation keeps coming to the 23 local governments of the state, the funds have remained idle in the state coffers leaving little to the unconstitutional interim administrators to pay salaries and maintain the councils.

Local governments being the third tier of government need free hand to run their affairs in line with constitutional provision. It behoves on the executive governor to hasten the conduct of election for socio-economic development of our 23 local governments and the state in general.

Ibrahim Mustapha Pambegua, Kaduna State 08169056963