Erstwhile chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has kicked against the clamour for the transfer of the mandate of conducting local government elections from state electoral commissions to INEC, even as he pointed out that state commissions can be empowered to conduct credible elections with minimum interference of governors.
He stated this at a public presentation of the election violence risk assessment report conducted by the United States Institute of Peace, USIP, held at the Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Research and Training, Mambayya, Kano on Wednesday.
The former INEC chair maintained that there is significant reason to reduce enormous burden from INEC, for it to conduct credible elections.
“Centralisation does not help matters, but we should ensure state electoral commissions have (the) capacity to conduct credible elections with minimum interference of state governors. What we are seeing now, state governors exercise a lot of power on state electoral commissions. We should find way in (the) constitution to guarantee the tenure of chairmen of state electoral commissions and direct funding of commissions.
“In many countries that practice federalism like Nigeria, local elections are conducted by local electoral commissions. In countries like England, U.S and India, local elections are conducted by state electoral commissions. In (the) U.S it is a local electoral body that organised local and national elections,” he said.
On ensuring peaceful and violence free election, Jega noted that, “violence has become a dominant factor in our politics and electoral process. Obviously it is very important we look for ways and means of minimising it or eliminating it totally from our politics and electoral processes.”
“Bringing peace into a country such as ours which is very diverse, very complex and which has been dis-governed for a very long time, requires (the) involvement of all of us, all stakeholders. All hands need to be on deck.”
“Everybody has a role to play. From an electoral body, when it conducts elections, it needs to do its job with professionalism, impartiality and it has to do everything to cure itself of negative perceptions, which can undermine the credibility of work that it does,” Jega said.
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