Rating Local Elections in Nigeria
In October 2018, I had the opportunity to join and volunteer with a meetup group called CivicTech Waterloo Region. At the time, Local Municipal Elections were happening all around Canada. One of CivicTechWR’s missions is to enhance citizen communications and public engagement for stronger development in the local community using technology.
As a group, having looked at how difficult it was to get wholistic election data to engage actively in Local elections in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge region, CivicTechWR took the initiative to solve this problem.
Basically, unstructured election-related data for the Waterloo region was gathered from different sources (government websites, social media, candidate websites, etc.) and then structured, so citizens could view and consume it easily.
The team designed a website to display the wards in the region.
- Waterloo Region Votes — https://waterlooregionvotes.org/
From the many lessons of this experience, I started seeing how useful it would be to shine more light on local municipal elections in Nigeria.
Fast forward to today, many Nigerians are aware of how our elected political officials have represented us so poorly. A lack of accountability and progression of impunity has resulted in the nation being regarded as fantastically corrupt, which, although degrading, is the truth.
And for so long, we feel like we have been in this inevitable circus of recycled incompetent leadership. It is as if we are stuck with the kind of leaders we get. Nigeria is a democracy, and this should not be so. The office of the citizen is the strongest office in a democratic land, and this power wielded ought to be actualized.
In a democracy, the only way out of bad leadership is through voting, and I am impressed with the number of people registering to vote recently.
But I feel like we as Nigerians have majorly been focusing on the popular elections, the big ones, like Presidential and State governors, and have neglected the others, which seem negligible but equally or even more important.
In the 2019 presidential election, 28 million people voted out of 83 million registered voters. That is a lot of people not casting their votes. That is a lot of voices not heard! One reason is that elections are generally not considered safe in Nigeria; hence, people who are scared for their lives would sit at home. However, I feel another reason for not voting is that there is a consensus amongst a large number of well-meaning people that their votes would not count. They ask themselves, “why bother?”
If this kind of scenario plays at the National level, then it is safe to say the same happens at State and Local Government levels. Hence, we need more people casting votes! And to do that, we need voters to feel empowered.
This brings me to the main premise of this essay:
Impact is local. Impact starts where you are.
Local Action, Nationwide impact. What do I mean?
Social experiment: I asked some young Nigerians I know, “Who is your Local Government Area (LGA) Chairman?”. And it will please you to know that 100% of them did not know. I don’t totally blame them because I don’t know mine 🙈. In fact, I can’t name any Local Government Chairman in Nigeria. How about the State House of Assembly? Who Is the representative representing your ward in your state? Let’s not now go to, who are your LGA Councillors? Is it that we think these officials don’t have any role to play?
For example, an LGA chairman is responsible for providing and maintaining public assets such as working transport systems, roads, elementary schools, parks, toilets, etc., within the Local government, amongst many other important duties. In Nigeria, there are 774 LGAs, each Local government consists of wards, and each ward elects a single member to its local council. Local government councils have a range of 10 to 13 elected councillors, all of which are responsible for making decisions that directly affect your immediate environment. Another position not given enough light is State House of Assembly members, who are responsible for ensuring the state budget money is effectively utilized. They also oversee the activities of ministries, departments and agencies within the State. If we have smart and competent people in these positions, there is more hope and guarantee that problems deemed as nationwide problems will be tackled at the basic communal level. Problems of smaller magnitude are easier to define and solve. We always don’t need to look up to the President. Buhari is not our problem.
So, firstly, it is vital that we elect capable people into local government offices and hold them accountable. Secondly, for one to successfully deliver in these positions, they must be able to hold people accountable, which means they must also be accountable people themselves.
How do we elect the right candidate and create a culture which sustains the right candidates? Constant education and transparency. Sounds easy to say (type), but this is the premise of the modern technology age, and we can leverage information technology to our advantage to achieve this goal. The internet has brought about the democratization of information.
In a country with the highest number of citizens living in poverty, the internet cannot be the only source of electoral education. We have to meet people where they are and provide education that is familiar to their way of life. For you to be engaged, you need to be educated. A large population of people need to be educated using different mediums (no pun intended).
Voters must be exposed to structured information about candidates at different levels of comprehension for different audiences. We need to meet the voters at their level of understanding with information that covers all candidates at all levels of government so they can intelligently decide whom to vote for.
My takeaway for Nigerians is to partake actively in an election where your impact as an electorate is wider. Your vote stands a significant chance to impact your ward, then your LGA, then your State, before Nigeria as a whole.
So as we look forward to the 2023 elections, let us remember that a single President cannot save Nigeria, but collectively as a people, we can!
Politics is everybody’s business.
Your vote is your power.
SORO SOKE at all levels.
