28th February, 2017
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Enugu has advocated enabling legislation that will outlaw transition or caretaker committee in the administration of local governments.
The state APC Chairman, Dr Ben Nwoye, in Enugu on Tuesday said that the move would help curb the excesses of state governors.
Nwoye said that some of the state governors had taken the advantage of the seeming lacuna in the constitution to “rape” the local councils through their errand boys as caretaker committee chairmen.
He said it had been tested that the constitution had no outright directive mandating state governments to run the local councils with elected executive council members.
“Whatever that is there in the constitution as regards the administration of local government areas is a weak provision and the courts have interpreted it up and down.
“That is why the state governors are not obeying it and there needs to be clarity that you cannot have unelected people to run the local councils.
“There should be a constitutional provision mandating them to conduct the elections because those on appointments are responsible to those that appointed them,” he said.
Nwoye said that it had become necessary to either scrap the state electoral bodies or make them subservient to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“The Federal Government should either scrap the state electoral bodies or get INEC to closely monitor their activities during local government elections.”
Nwoye called on the Sen. Ken Nnamani-led Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee not to contemplate foisting a two-party system on Nigeria as canvassed in some quarters.
He said that the issue of a two-party system would run contrary to the provision of freedom of association in the constitution.
According to him, the APC is a beneficiary of the multi-party system.
He said that even advanced democracies such as the United States of America on whose Nigeria’s democracy was modelled did not run a two-party state.
“Two -system do not work in a true democracy because as long as people have freedom to associate that freedom allows them,” he said.
Nwoye said that the state chapter of the party had during the Electoral Reform Committee public hearing in the state made its presentation on that.
“We need to allow people to associate as it allows for new flow of ideas. So, the committee should not go into that,” Nwoye said.