Why elected Nasarawa chairmen, councillors should be reinstated

This is however not an attempt to share blame among the personalities and institutions of government that dissolved the elected third tier of government and their chief executives. It is just an appeal to all the stakeholders to see to what must be done to reinstate the elected council officials to honour democracy as the […]

This is however not an attempt to share blame among the personalities and institutions of government that dissolved the elected third tier of government and their chief executives. It is just an appeal to all the stakeholders to see to what must be done to reinstate the elected council officials to honour democracy as the state and Nigeria prepare for the general elections which will take place less than four months from now.

Observers of events in government circles recall that the Nasarawa State House of Assembly passed a resolution asking the governor to dismiss the duly elected council officials. They also recall that the governor went ahead to put into action the resolution of the House by sacking the officials.

But it has become crucial now for the governor, the House of Assembly, and the courts of the land to make the council chairmen return to work in the task of taking the state to the coming all-important general elections.

The dismissed council chairmen and councillors were elected for a three-year term. Dismissing them prematurely was a huge injustice to the persons affected and an unfortunate affront to the liberal democracy that the nation is currently practising.

The sack of the council chief executives also has no known antecedent. Nothing like it happened throughout the eight years that Alhaji Adamu Abdullahi was the governor. The chairmen and councillors ran their offices as duly stipulated by extant laws without undue interference from the state government.

Sending out the elected officials from their offices the way the state government did amounted to changing the rules of the game when the game was already in progress and it is not done that way. If the chairmen and councillors were to serve for two years, that rule ought to have been made before they were elected. People should know the terms of the office they have in mind even before they get to the stage of seeking the votes of the people for such office. Having got the mandate for an office as the council chairmen did, office holders must be allowed to discharge their mandate the way existing legal statutes recognize.

If the decision was to be reached that the elected council chairmen and councillors were to do two years in office, the governor would be expected to send a bill to the House of Assembly to legislate the decision and explain to the people of the state that the people they would be electing would serve them for two years.

Dismissing the elected chairmen and councillors at two years when they still had one year to go was unfair to them.

Also, the development does not help democracy; neither does it benefit the electorate.

The directors of personnel management who now head the councils in place of elected citizens are civil service bureaucrats who have no claim to democratic ideals. Also, these technocrats, by the same reality that they were not elected into office, do not have any binding duty to offer service to the people of the state.

Mohammed Sani wrote this piece from Lafia, Nasarawa State.