Rivers: Preparing for council elections

● APP plans campaign flag-offs in three Senatorial Districts

By PHC Telegraph

From every indication, chairmanship and councillorship candidates in Rivers State are getting ready to hit the campaign trail.

They will be going from door to door, unit to unit, community to community and ward to ward in search of popular support and votes that will determine their political destiny.

The Rivers, State Independent Electoral Commission, RSIEC, had earlier set a 90-day corridor for the conduct of local elections.

According to the plan, elections at the grassroots will take place on October 5, 2024.

If all goes well, results of elections held in the 23 local government areas would be collated and announced within 48 hours.

Signs emerging show that RSIEC is poised to conduct local council elections within the framework of the timetable it announced earlier.

Somehow, the RSIEC  plan was put in place before the  Supreme Court ruling which says elections should hold within 90 days after elected councils complete their tenure.

This would mean that the eggheads at the commission led by Justice Adolphus Enebeli have a deep understanding of the law and how it should work.

Candidates who have emerged largely by consensus on different party platforms have been screened by RSIEC, thus paving way for the commencement of campaigns across the State.

On social media, posters of candidates drawn from different political parties have appeared.

On Radio stations across the State, some candidates are already selling themselves to the public through jingles.

From available information, candidates  of the Action Peoples Congress, APP, drawn  from Andoni, Eleme, Gokana, Khana, Opobo/Nkoro, Oyigbo and Tai Local Government  Areas  are converging at Bori for an open air campaign.

The campaign  team  of the APP would move thereafter to Ahoada in the Rivers West Senatorial District where chairmen and councillorship candidates from Abua/Odual, Ahoada East, Ahoada West, Akuku Toru, Asari Toru, Bonny, Degena and Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni would gather for the official flag-off of the campaign on Wednesday.

On Thursday, it would be the turn of candidates from local government areas in the Rivers East Senatorial District to converge in Port Harcourt for the take off of open air campaigns.

Candidates of the APC  and the YPP who have been screened have equally hit the campaign trail.

The ongoing effort to install third tier administrations in the Rivers State is coming against the backdrop of moves being made to create an electoral arrangement that would give the power to conduct local elections to a federal agency.

Although the President, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has repprtedly endorsed the new bill passed by the National Assembly, it is doubtful that it will take full effect without a constitutional amendment process endorsed by at least two-thirds of the States in the federation as prescribed by the Nigerian Constitution.

Will the National Assembly restrict the amendment of certain critical laws of a constitutional nature which require the input of federating units to itself?

A source who spoke to this publication asked, “At a time many Nigerians are asking for a genuine federalist state, should Nigeria as a country be pulling in the direction of a unitary system? ”

These questions are begging for answers as Nigerians try to make sense of some of the changes that are part of the unfolding Tinubu years.

In the meantime, most States in the country are operating caretaker  committee systems at the grassroots.

Kano State the other day extended the life of caretaker committees by six month, a move which suggests that it may not be in a hurry to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court on the conduct of local elections.

Should the Rivers, State go ahead with the conduct of local elections, it would be the first to comply with the declarative order of the Apex Court.