The post-mortem of last Saturday’s Lagos state council polls have been characterised by bickering, endless controversy and probable emergence of new political blocs and leadership in the state. TOPE MUSOWO reports
Th e Saturday, July 22 Lagos state local government polls had come and gone but will the aftermath of the election is still making headlines in the newspapers in the country, especially the controversial results and conduct of the exercise occasioning dissenting voices. While the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) members in Lagos state are praising LASIEC for a job well done, members of diff erent opposition parties described the exercise as a charade and electoral misadventure.
Th e post mortem of the polls has been characterized by discordant tunes in the polity. However, the dissenting voices notwithstanding, the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) went ahead to churned out 57 local council executive chairmen, who will oversee the aff airs of governance at the grassroots level in the state for the next four years.
Aggrieved contestants in the councils across the state have threatened litigations over alleged subversion of people’s will, if the tribunal could not eventually overturn the election of any of the council bosses then they are to hold forte for the next four years. In Odi-Olowo Ojuwoye and Ajegunle for instance, two infl uential individuals in the Lagos politics, who are currently member of the Federal House of Representatives; Hon.
Dauda Kako Are of the Accord party representing Mushin 1 federal constituency and Hon. Rita Orji of the Peoples Democratic Party representing Ajeromi-Ifelodun Federal Constituency, have vowed to set the record straight, having evidences that clearly indict LASIEC, an electoral body which directed that results of elections be declared at the collation centres, but refused to certify eventual winners. Ikosi-Isheri LCDA also had a fair share of this disturbing development.
Internally, the APC had created enmity and acrimony among members, who formerly wields infl uence but got rubbished by political permutations that clearly worked against their interest, Barrister Muiz Banire (SAN), a one time close confi dant of the National Leader of APC, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, got trounced in the just concluded polls.
He was a deciding factor in national polity but he is being made politically irrelevant at the council level- none of his loyalists got elected into offi ce at the last polls and this may aff ect his weight in the envisaged convention of the party. It was leart that more Asiwaju’s loyalists s are already strategizing on how to demystify his dynasty so as to birth a new order, the likes of Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), the Minister of Power,Work and Housing believed to be fi nancially strong to pull weight with the political titan is silently making moves, Fashola presently making his calculations, by and large, will leave no stone unturned to right some perceived wrongs.
It is even being speculated that the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, is aware of this antics and this explains why most of Fashola loyalists are being weeded out of the scheme of things in the Lagos polityho might have emerged through indirect primaries (consensus),the party at diff erent councils choose individuals who did not go the whole hug of screening either at the DSS stable or EFCC, nor got the support of stakeholders via consensus, in spite of all the shoddy process they held election and hurriedly swears in council head who are likely to have case to answer at the tribunal, the certifi cates of return was hurriedly issued by LASIEC on Monday 24th of July, the next day they were sworn in by the Governor and many of the elected Chairmen broke the order by swearing in councillors who originally as elected offi cials, ought to have a proclamation to inaugurate their legislative order aided by the clerk of the house.
Just recently the apex law making body in the land was reported to have approved via constitutional amendment that Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, conduct Local Government election henceforth this automatically if ratifi ed takes away the job off the State SIECs. But the agitations, bickering and controversy continue endlessly.
