NIGERIA: Local elections postponed to 10 August

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Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

NIGERIA: Local elections postponed to 10 August

LAGOS, 25 April (IRIN) - A controversy over local elections in Nigeria,
originally scheduled for 18 May, was resolved on Wednesday with all
stakeholders agreeing on a postponement to 10 August.

The decision to defer the polls - so as to accommodate a revision of the
voters' register and new political parties - was made at a meeting chaired
by President Olusegun Obasanjo. The country's 36 state governors, officials
of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and leaders of state
legislatures participated in that meeting.

The state governments had chosen the May date following a Supreme Court
ruling against an extension of the tenure of local councils from three to
four years by the national legislature. The ruling also affirmed that states
had constitutional control over local governments.

"Transition committees will be appointed to oversee local government
councils from 29 May to 29 August. Then local government elections will take
place on 10 August in the entire country," Enugu State's governor, Chimaroke
Nnamani, told reporters at the end of the meeting.

He said INEC was given until 25 July to finish revising the voters'
register.

Doubts had mounted over the initial date the state governments had chosen,
after a court ruled two weeks ago that the polls could not be held without a
review of the voters' register. The ruling was in favour of 10 youths who
had sued INEC on the grounds they would be disenfranchised if the polls used
the old voters' register prepared for elections in 1999, when they had not
yet reached the voting age of 18 years.

New political parties, required by the constitution to win a stipulated
number of seats in local elections in order to qualify for other polls, also
complained that the May date was inconvenient.

Nigeria had been gripped by political controversy after the national
legislature passed, in December 2001, a new electoral law which put local
elections after presidential, gubernatorial and legislative polls. This, in
effect, extended the tenure of elected local governments to four years
against the three prescribed by the constitution. It also meant that new
parties would not be able to contest state and national positions until
2007.

The move was widely viewed as Obasanjo's ploy to keep out emerging political
parties likely to threaten his re-election plans.

Governors of the country's 36 states filed a suit at the Supreme Court
challenging the electoral law as an usurpation of powers which the
constitution granted to the states over local governments. Last month the
Court nullified the extension of the tenure of local governments, that meant
that local polls had to be held.

Meanwhile Obasanjo announced on Thursday he will run for re-election in
April 2003. "I have decided that it is best that I make myself available as
a presidential candidate,'' Obasanjo told thousands of supporters at a rally
in the capital, Abuja.
[ENDS]

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