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Nigeria's 'democracy' unmasked
26/03/2004 09:59 - (SA)
Lagos - Nigerians will go to the polls on Saturday for long-delayed local elections which many here fear will be so violent and openly fraudulent that they will unmask the failure of what is still often called Nigeria's "democratic experiment".
At stake will be control of Nigeria's 774 local government councils, and therefore a licence to embezzle public funds, to extort arbitrary levies and to live a brazenly wealthy lifestyle in a country blighted by endemic poverty.
"It won't be an election. All the governors are going to install their puppets, so they can control the money. There will be violence, because the opposition are equally desperate," Olusegun Adeniyi, political columnist with the newspaper This Day, told reporters on Thursday.
The last time Nigerian voters were asked to choose the officials responsible for primary schools, roads, wells, clinics and markets was after the end of military rule in 1999, when local councils were elected for three year terms.
When these mandates expired, however, such were the problems organising fresh polls that the elections should be postponed and "caretaker chairmen" appointed by Nigeria's 36 powerful state governors to take over.
In 2003 Nigeria managed to hold national and state level elections, but two putative local polling dates came and went without a ballot being cast.
Feathering nests
Now, on Saturday, voters will finally get a chance to pass judgement on their local officials, many of whom have been busy feathering their own nests.
"To be honest, we are doing nothing at the local government council. It is the most corrupt level of government," said the chief engineer at one of the local governments in the sprawling city of Lagos, where 13 million people live without reliable power, water or sanitation.
"We go to the office, collect our allocation and revenue and share it out, leaving a little for development purposes. If local government councils were scrapped, Nigerians would lose nothing. It is a hopeless situation, we are a drainpipe on the nation's economy," he told reporters, on condition of anonymity.
In the immediate run-up to Saturday's vote, assassins have claimed the lives of a ruling party vice-chairman, a state electoral commissioner, a candidate and his wife, a policeman and a former airline boss. Last week police arrested a caretaker chairman for the alleged murder of a rival candidate.
In many states it is not even clear how many local governments there are. In Lagos, Governor Bola Tinubu's party is campaigning in 57 districts, including 37 he recently created. The opposition insists that it only recognises the 20 councils named allotted the city in the constitution.
Nigeria's police chief Tafa Balogun has not taken the challenge lightly, and has deployed his entire forced of 250 000 armed officers to keep order. He also warned that "the force is ever ready to bring the full weight of the law to bear on those who are bent on scuttling the nation's nascent democracy."
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