A non-profit organisation, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement Africa, has called for constitutional reforms to strengthen the state independence electoral commissions toward enhancing the quality of local government elections in the country.

The Executive Director of the organisation, Samsom Itodo, made the call at a book launch in honour of one of its board members, Prof. Nnamdi Aduba, on Saturday in Jos, Plateau State.

The book launch titled “Building a virile nation: Law, economy and good governance,” was organised to honour Mr Aduba, who recently retired from the University of Jos, having clocked the age of 70.

Mr Itodo lamented that 90 per cent of the local government elections recently conducted in the country were marred by irregularities.

 According to him, the SIECs lacked the constitutional reforms that will enable them conduct credible elections.

He stated, “Our position in YIAGA Africa has been that 90 per cent of the local government polls conducted in 17 states were not credible. They do not meet the integrity test and this is because these institutions are not independent; there has been a lot of political interference in their operations. You, however, cannot call for the scrapping of SIECs because the reforms that have taken place in the Independent National Electoral Commission have not been implemented for SIECs. SIECs are not financially and operationally independent; their regulations and guidelines are subject to the approval of the governor. These are some of issues that needed to be addressed if we want credible elections at the local government level.’’

On budget increment being demanded by INEC, Mr Itodo explained that conducting general elections in Nigeria required huge funding.

 The executive director, who also blamed the political class for regularly subverting the efforts of INEC to deliver credible elections, called for attitudinal change among Nigerians.

He added, “Nigerians need to understand that elections are expensive –on general elections day, each voter will have not less than five ballot papers. It costs a lot to produce them. I think what Nigerians should worry about is the fact that as we spend more money for elections, the quality of our elections is declining. If our politicians aren’t subverting the efforts of INEC toward conducting credible elections just for their personal gains, we won’t be investing so much funds on technology to ensure every vote counts.’’

 Earlier, Mr Aduba, thanked the management of the University of Jos and his former colleagues in the Law Faculty, for organising the book launch in his honour.

Mr Aduba, a professor of constitutional law, promised to continually contribute his quota toward the growth of democracy in Nigeria, even in retirement.

He said, “I’m retired but not tired. Teaching and research has been part of me; that is what I have been doing in the last 46 years of my life. I started from the University of Maiduguri and moved to the University of Jos 33 years ago. So, I will continue to mentor the young ones, particularly those who are serious about shaping the future of this country for the better.’’

(NAN)