Eben Enasco Reporting.
It has become a reoccurring decimal to shift dates to conduct a state council’s election since the last local government elections were held over four years ago in Edo state.
The most paradoxical part of the inconsistent thing about the election is proof that the state government is not ready just yet to have a new crop of local government elected administrators
Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State directed the 18 local government chairmen whose three-year tenure ends on Friday, March 5, 2021, to hand over to the Head of Local Government Administration HOLGA, in their respective councils.
The LGA chairmen were sworn in on March 5, 2018, for a three-year tenure, following their victory at the local government polls conducted on March 3, 2018.
Obaseki, in a memo dated March 2, 2021, and titled, ‘Handing over by Local Government Council Chairmen, endorsed by the Permanent Secretary, M.E Jos-Bazuaye, Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs, directed the elected council officials to vacate office on the said date following the expiration of their tenure.
Since then, democratic dispositions have departed the man who was considered by the governed to obey constitutional precedents but failed by the counts.
On March 24, Governor Godwin Obaseki inaugurated a 7-man Edo Independent Electoral Commission EDSIEC Board, ahead of the state local councils poll.
Speaking at the ceremony, Obaseki said, the board was expected to organize a free, fair, and credible election in the state.
Shortly after its inaugural event, the sedentary Electoral Commission fixed the Local elections sometime in October 2022.
Weeks later, the commission again shifted the goal post saying it would take place on January 14, 2023, according to the Edo State Independent Electoral Commission EDSIEC.
The commission announced this on Friday in Benin via a notice signed by Emmanuel Abebe on behalf of its chairperson.
In a recent development, Edo State Independent Electoral Commission EDSIEC has again shifted the date earlier fixed for the Local Government Elections from Thursday, January 19, 2023, to Saturday, May 06, 2023.
In a statement by the EDSIEC Administrative Secretary, Sunday A. Osayande, the electoral body said the decision is sequel to the fear of threat to peace and security over apprehension that many electorates will be disenfranchised if the Commission is unable to get an updated Voters Register from the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC.
The statement noted that all the Board of the Edo State Independent Electoral Commission at its meeting held Thursday, September 29, 2022, resolved to shift the date earlier fixed for the Local Government Elections from Thursday, January 19, 2023, to Saturday, May 6, 2023, throughout the 18 Local Government Areas and the 192 Wards of the State.
The decision to shift the council’s election is the third since the inauguration of the state Electoral Commission, a development seen by many as inconsistent and frustrating.
Given the shift, many are of the view that the local government election may not hold before the end of the tenure, of the present administration.
This, seriously, points to the agitations to have an autonomous local government administration in Nigeria.