EDO STATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT SELECTION PROCESS

EDO STATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT SELECTION PROCESS

The Bane of Backwardness

By Oriaifoh Godwins

The just concluded Edo state  Local Government Chairmanship and Councilor selection process, that is otherwise supposed to be an election process, is the main reason why Edo state and indeed, the rest of the country is this backward in  terms of infrastructural development.

There is no doubt that the local government tier of government is the closest to the people; as such, the administration at the local government level should be such that, those to be entrusted with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the local government, are properly screened, and presented to the people, so the people can make their decision on who should lead them, after taking into cognizance, the pedigree of the candidates presented. This way, Democracy, which is the choice of the majority, would be seen as practiced; but this is not so.

In the words of Ambassador Martins Ihoeghian, Uhomoibhi OFR, “the flawed selection process of our political representatives, is the cause of their underperformance”. This assertion, by Ambassador Uhomoibhi, is a verifiable fact, especially bearing in mind that the political representatives so selected, will eventually be responsible only to those persons that projected them into office not to the people they are supposedly in office to serve.

"the flawed selection process of our political representatives, is the cause of their underperformance”.

In my opinion, we should begin to learn how to do things differently so we don’t always come out with the same ‘sorry’ results.

Some persons may argue that, after all, it’s only the primary election for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as the All Progressives Congress, APC,  Labor Party, LP, will also come up with their primaries hence, contest with the selected candidates of the PDP. Yes, it’s a good reasoning, but the fact, that we all know, is that once the ruling party in a state conduct their primaries, and presents their candidates for local government election, the candidates that emerged, are as good as the winners of the election; we have seen that happen here in Edo state; where, as the local government elections were going on, yet to be concluded, announcements of winners were made.

In my own opinion, the local government administration in Nigeria will continue to be an appendage of the state governor, and the administrators a stooge to the governor, until absolute autonomy is granted to local governments in Nigeria.

In any case, it is very important for all the selected local government chairman and councilors to be aware of the gargantuan task ahead of them; especially bearing in mind that network of roads in our local government areas/rural areas are completely grounded; in Esanland, water in the rural and even in the township is a very scarce necessity, our public schools don’t have teachers and the physical structures in the schools are dilapidating, local government worker and public school teachers salaries are not paid as at when due, and a myriad of several other problems , ranging from ecological to physical infrastructures, to security, etc. They must know the tasks ahead of them. 

We wait and hope to see the magic to be performed by the selected local government chairmen and councilors, as Edo state local government election draws close.