Opinion... Local Government Elections in Cross River State: Matters Arising
By Venatius IKEM
Not a few persons think that I must be mad to be leading the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Cross River State into an election everyone believes has been won and lost even before the candidates emerged and the first ballot cast!
This is the extremity of the anomaly we as a people are seeking to endorse and normalise instead of challenging and condemning.
As a politician, a citizen and a democrat, nothing challenges and insults my sensibilities more than this. Times like this call for men to stand up to be counted. What are these arguments?
I am told that there is nothing we can do about it because the Cross River State Independent Electoral Commission (CROSIEC) members are appointed by the Governor and will do his bidding!
I am also reminded that, that is what my party the PDP did in the past when she had the same opportunity! I am told that that is what other states are doing.
I am not sure I have heard any other attempt at justifying this expected perfidy.
First, let me remind us of the maxim that says, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely unless of course challenged. Let me spare us a lecture on the history of democracy as a more preferred form of governance.
Let me, however, not fail to remind us that it is for this reason that the very idea of democracy as a government of the people, elected by the people for the good governance of the people is universally preferred over rulership by kings/monarchies and other autocratic forms of government.
The critical factor being our choice as a people. To seek to elevate the elected Governor to the level of a monarch, whose preferences are sacrosanct, is to admit and give up that we are not in a democracy.
The antecedent to the crave to capture power at all levels including the wards representations of the people has its foundation in greed and the perpetuation of corruption.
In the past several decades, successive administrations have battled with how to tame this monster in our body polity which has completely eroded any pretense to development at the grassroots level of governance which is the local government council.
Power has increasingly been seized and the local administrations completely emasculated.
The local economies, which used to sustain some existence with local business men and women, local tax collection via licensing and other IGR sources, have been halted by successive rampaging state Governors with dire consequences for our rural dwellers.
Recently, the President Tinubu- led administration has taken laudable policy steps to attempt to halt these monstrous strides of decadence in our body polity with huge acclaim.
This has been buoyed by one of the most celebrated decisions of the supreme count of Nigeria since its creation. In Attorney General of the Federation Vs Attorney-General of Abia State & 35 others, the court elaborately enunciated far reaching pronouncements that if implemented will reposition local governments as veritable centers of development, moving forward.
The Supreme Court by that judgement completely removed Governors from interfering in the disbursement of Local Government Council funds in whatever guise.
What has been the response of Governors who shamelessly feel their candy box is being taken away from them? Most Governors have, in order to beat the Supreme Court dateline of October for stoppage of federal monthly allocations to local governments that are not democratically elected, decided to organise local government elections by fire by force.
In our state, Governor Otu quickly decided first to change the goal post for the election.
Instead of 90 days notice for election, he decided that we must conduct the election within 30 days, now maybe 37 days! Why?
The argument seems to be so that he does not miss out on the October allocation of funds to local governments in Cross River state! You may want to ask, save for reasons unspoken, is our Governor a chairman of council?
The state government’s share of federal allocation presently oscillates between N6bn and N8bn monthly while the local governments collectively collect about N5.6bn to N7bn monthly.
The Supreme Court judgement did not say such accrueable allocations should be lost. It only says they should not be released until democratically elected councils are put in place.
So, if the state government is not complicit in the allegations of appropriating local government funds, why the haste not to miss out or even been a delay of the allocations?
Why is 90 days so scary that the Governor had to quickly abridge the laws allowing for a well-organised election to take place at the local government level? Cross River state has received a total of N118.8bn in 2023.
Where has the money been put to use? From January 2024- May 2024, they received another N33.53bn in allocation.
Local governments received N5,690,076,433.76 in March and N5,627,937,803.66 in June.
Where is the money and for what purpose has it been put to? And several such astronomical sums totaling between state and local government in average of between N11bn and N12bn monthly without anything to show for it.
We will no longer keep quiet. Statistics are available at the National Bureau of statistics.
If the Governor does not thread the path of reasonableness moving forward, we will certainly take steps to challenge all actions in various courts of Law to enforce the pronouncements of the Supreme Court judgment despite all bottlenecks.
To further buttress the point, the Governor made a laughing stock of himself when a forth night ago, with all the aura of an Emperor proclaimed to his bewildered party leaders his anointed candidates for the local government election without any pretense to democratic decorum and norms.
Let me use this opportunity to draw Governor Otu’s attention to this less repeated quote by one of America’s favorite Presidents Abraham Lincoln who said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
As a victim of so-called PDP injustice in the past, it would demand of him the utmost humility in exercising power, in similar circumstances that his perceived traducers were.
Alternatively, if he enjoys seeing his erstwhile traducers groveling at his feet, it means threading the same path, then he should prepare to grovel at another’s feet when his time is up.
Otherwise visiting Innocent citizens, who voted for him with the purported sins of those he now wines and dines with is standing logic on its head and is an abuse of his claim to God’s deliverance upon his mandate.
Cross Riverians may be silent and incapable of courage to tell him to his face the truth, which in any case he may not care to know, but his steps in the face of this election will make or mar his administration forever, and irredeemably.
Cross River State is nether Rivers State, nor Akwa Ibom State, Kaduna nor Benue States.
We are proudly Cross Riverian. It is most disingenuous for a Governor to tell us he is implementing what is happening in other states when it is in the negative.
Should we be expecting the same minimum wage those states have enacted or only the arbitrary seizure of our local government funds as a fitting comparison? Let me remind our Governor that as we talk about local government elections the state presently “exists” only in Calabar! Odukpani junction to the Western flank of the state has been cut off because the road has been rendered impassable.
To the North from Odukpani Junction is a nightmare. Never in the history of our state has infrastructure so completely collapsed without any concern by the state government such as it is today.
We celebrated with him the filling of potholes in Calabar metropolis. That is all that can be said of this one- and-half-years-old administration of 'Peoples First' Your Excellency.
Your People are not feeling first.
They are not even feeling last. They are not feeling anything because you have already forgotten them.
If the Governor means anything for the people of Cross River sate, he should allow a free and fair democratic elections at the grassroots level so that competition for development and sustainable local economy can once again be enshrined.
This is what will put people First.
Venatius A. Ikem is the Cross River State Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (Party)
