Unlike presidential and governorship elections, chairmanship and councillorship polls are relatively without drama. Even the public attention attracted by such elections is nothing compared to the awareness other elections generate among the people. But it appears that is about to change in the chairmanship and councillorship elections holding today (Saturday) across 377 wards, 20 local government areas and 37 local council development areas of Lagos State.
The Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission had announced that 12 parties would participate in the elections, listing them as: Accord Party, Action Alliance, Alliance for Democracy, All Progressives Congress, Peoples Democratic Party, Labour Party, All Progressives Grand Alliance, United Democratic Party, United Progressive Party, KOWA Party, National Action Council and Peoples Democratic Movement.
But according to a senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Dr. Rasheed Akinyemi, the elections will attract “a lot of attention and create an undue sensation among politicians because such have not been held in the state in a long time.”
Also, the elections are coming at a time when the two biggest parties in the state – APC and PDP- have been weakened by internal crisis; thereby, stirring public attention. Many residents are eager to see how the elections will pan out and if the problems in the two parties will benefit other smaller ones.
For the APC, its problem started with the imposition of candidates by the leadership of the party. One of the controversial decisions of the party was to stick to an earlier agreement to give the party’s automatic tickets to 18 local government chairmanship aspirants as commendations for their roles in the past.
Consequently, its chairmanship and councillorship primaries were marred by violence, with at least two persons killed and many injured in some wards and local government areas.
For example, areas like Ejigbo, Ikeja, Mushin, Oshodi-Isolo, Agege and Amuwo-Odofin were rocked by violence during the party’s primaries. At Shogunle in Oshodi area of the state, one of the leaders of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Rasaq Bello, popularly known as Hamburger, was allegedly killed by supporters of one of the aspirants in Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area after a fight broke out between the rival groups.
One man identified as Desokan Baba Owo was also reportedly shot dead in the Mafoluku area of the state in a reprisal that followed.
At the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, during the chairmanship primary to elect candidates for the polls, a violent protest broke out midway into the exercise as protesters vowed not to accept any imposition of candidates. The Chairman of the Elections Committee, Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, was also attacked and almost stripped naked by the protesters. As part of the backlash, some angry youths in Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Area burnt some sections of the secretariat.
Although it was learnt that the party held reconciliatory meetings to appeal to some of the aggrieved politicians and find ways to compensate them, some party members had expressed fears that the problem might affect the APC’s chances in the elections.
Some experts feared that pockets of violence might also be recorded during Saturday’s elections in line with the country’s ugly history of political violence.
“For example, we might hear about one or two deaths; the family will weep and after the elections, people will continue with their lives. Whether the election is at the local or federal level, there is always a form of violence, so we cannot talk about the history of elections in Nigeria without talking about violence,” Akinyemi said.
But an APC member, Mr. Diran Oladosu, said he did not foresee any violence on Saturday. He, however , described the imposition of candidates on the electorate as shameful and hypocritical.
“It is hypocritical for the APC to continue to impose candidates on people when it says it is for change. You cannot continue to impose candidates people don’t want on them and expect them to give such candidates support. But I don’t think there will be violence,” he said.
Also describing the imposition as fraudulent, Oladosu said each chairmanship aspirant had to pay N555,000 and N5,000 for nomination form and Expression of Interest form respectively, while councillorship aspirants had to pay N150,000 and N5,000 each for similar forms respectively.
Oladosu blamed the APC’s loss of a number of seats to the PDP in the 2015 state House of Assembly and House of Representatives’ elections on the imposition of candidates, saying it ought to stop.
“So if our party (APC) is not very careful this time around, it will lose some key areas to other parties in Saturday’s chairmanship and councillorship elections,” he said.
In the countdown to Saturday’s elections in Lagos, it is obvious that many members of the APC are displeased with the situation. Even the party’s National Legal Adviser, Dr. Muiz Banire (SAN), had in a recent interview with Saturday PUNCH, faulted the conduct of the primaries, saying he did not believe anything of sort was held.
He had said, “That must have just been an assemblage of human beings, the purpose of which I wouldn’t know, but certainly not for primaries. My own view is clear, which is nothing personal. Our constitution is very clear on the way to go about it. If you look at Article 20 of our (APC) constitution, it says a lot about the procedure for nomination of candidates at all levels, from councillorship to the President and that is what must be followed.
“The good news is that the Supreme Court in Nigeria has consistently been telling us its position that people must comply with the party’s constitution. That is why I always counsel to avoid this pitfall, and it is not peculiar to Lagos alone. So, for me, it’s nothing personal and what the constitution requires is not optional.”
Akinyemi, however, disagreed with APC members saying the party’s imposition of candidates could lead to its defeat during the elections, saying parties always find a way to compensate aggrieved members.
“We don’t have any tangible democracy in this country. People who have put down candidates will have some sympathy, so they will compensate the others after the elections. Politics is also about bargaining; even when one candidate wins an election, the people with him are compensated.
“So the leaders of the party will call the aggrieved members to say we know you have mobilised people and done this or that, this is your compensation.”
Similarly, the PDP in the state has been embroiled in running battles within itself. A prolonged crisis over the party’s national leadership between Senator Ahmed Makarfi and Senator Ali Modu Sheriff had polarised it into two and even a recent Supreme Court judgment that favoured the former had only raised fresh questions ahead of Saturday’s polls.
Before the judgment of the apex court, the PDP had two factional chairmen in Lagos – Mr. Segun Adewale (Sheriff’s camp) and Mr. Moshood Salvador (Makarfi’s camp). Both factions had conducted primaries in all the local councils of the state but a judgment earlier delivered by the Court of Appeal in favour of Sheriff had given Adewale’s faction the edge.
Therefore, it was the list of candidates that emerged from the primaries conducted by Adewale’s faction that was recognised by LASIEC. And with that development, those on the list of Makarfi/Salvador’s faction were encouraged to form an alliance with the Labour Party.
In a press conference in Lagos in June, Salvador had announced that his PDP faction in the state had formed an alliance with the Labour Party, while appealing to PDP lovers to support the Labour-PDP alliance and vote for the Labour Party.
“It is an alliance. We never decamped to any party. We never declared for another party and we never dumped our dear PDP. We are the PDP’s strength in Lagos State. In this pre-electoral alliance, we have 342 councillorship candidates and 52 chairmanship candidates.
“As from this very moment, I now declare that all our candidates must start pasting their posters, commence the house-to-house campaigns and educate the electorate on the circumstance of our using Labour Party for this council election only.
“The LGA chairmen, the ward chairmen and all our LCDA chairmen must start work tirelessly to educate the public on this council election and work closely with all their Labour Party counterparts and candidates in their various local governments.
“We are PDP any day and any time. We only have a pre-electoral political alliance with the Labour Party to contest these coming chairmanship elections only. This is not the first time of this type of alliance in Nigeria,” he had said.
But since the Supreme Court judgment was delivered, overriding that of the appellate court, Adewale has continued to address himself as the state’s PDP chairman.
Meanwhile, some PDP members in Lagos have noted that although the recent Supreme Court judgment has finally put the leadership tussle in the party to rest, the crisis will have a lasting damage on the party.
One of such PDP members in the state, Mr. Hakeem Akinnosho, identified Saturday’s (today) elections as the first casualty of the post-PDP crisis, saying “members’ votes would be split between the PDP and the other parties like the Labour Party and the Accord Party.”
“Some of our members will be confused and not know if to vote for the PDP or the Labour Party; it is sad that we let the internal crisis go on for too long,” he added.
Another lecturer of political science in UNILAG, Prof. Derin Ologbenla, predicted victory for the APC in most of the wards and local governments, but also wished his prediction would fail for the sake of democracy.
He said, “All of the other parties will all have problems because they don’t have enough resources and the kind of structure that the APC has in Lagos, so the APC is still likely to win most of the chairmanship and councillorship positions because of the political structure it has on the ground.
“The only problem is that the imposition of candidates by the party could create a backlash in some areas where people will deliberately not vote for the APC and vote for either the Labour Party or the Accord Party, but generally, I think the APC will still carry the day. The PDP could not put its house in order. But it will be a good thing for us to have a mixture of different parties winning the positions because if the APC wins everything, it will be like rubber-stamping the whole process from the governor to the heads of local governments and to the councillors.
“It is not good to have the APC winning everything; that means in the council, there will be no second opinion. Everyone will just be rubber-stamping whatever the executive wants. That is not democracy; there should be a dissenting voice or a minority view.
“The minority will have their say and the majority will carry the day, but at least, they would have heard an alternative view. If there are many councillors from different political parties, then there will be healthy debates in the council on how to move the council forward. But if they all belong to the APC, it will be easier to take decisions, but what type of decisions? Are they well discussed?”
Akinyemi, however, added that small parties in the elections did not stand much chance because of the lack of the resources to “keep agents and bribe people” like their big contenders.
“The small parties are relevant during elections period and go back to being quiet after that. For you to have a structure, it costs a lot of money and the small parties cannot afford that,” he said.
Credit: GBENRO ADEOYE, Punch
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