THIS is a season of local government elections, boycott of them, election petitions and court cases.

We are in a season of anomie.  The people watch helplessly as this legalised fraud called local government elections continues to generate killings, murder and mayhem in the land.

Our leaders continue to speak with tongue in cheek of free and fair local government elections. Every Nigerian knows these elections are neither free nor fair. How can they be when state electoral commissioners are good boys of their respective governors.

The government in every state wins all (or nearly all) the local government seats and the opposition heads for the courts – another season of harvest for lawyers.  Let us remind ourselves that those who make legitimate change impossible make violent change inevitable, and hence the violence.  In some states, for instance Kogi, the opposition wisely decided to boycott the polls.  Can anyone blame them for refusing to use good money to chase an exercise in futility?

In all the states that have so far conducted local government elections, it is a fact that the governor delivers between 80% – 90% of all the seats to his cronies.  What a huge joke?  This sadly look like a replication of pre-Jega INEC when election results were written on a day before polling and election day became a mere formality to announce the previous night’s work. Everyone was aware of this and when some of us decided to contest election, we were advised not to waste hard earned money on what was a scam.

One active participant in this monumental election rigging narrated to me how the governorship of Imo State in 2007 was decided and awarded to someone – a decision taken in Ogun State.  Martin Agbaso was the victim of that robbery.  The question that bogs the mind is whether Nigerians are prepared to make the necessary sacrifice to keep our fledgling democracy alive.  “Democracy”,  Sir Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in 1947, “is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.  Let us pause and ponder the alternatives – God forbid – a reversal to despotism.

There cannot be a struggle for true freedom without a general national resurgence.  The people must actively be involved in shaping our nation.  Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty as Americans learnt at great cost.

What currently goes on in all the states under the guise of local government elections is for use of a mild term a CHARADE.  As long as the state electoral commissions conduct this farcical exercise, the outcome will continue to be predictable.

In this period when parliament is set to again amend the 1999 (as amended) Constitution, it is time for concerned Nigerians to get involved and ensure that conduct of all elections is domiciled in INEC.  This will also give INEC enough work to do all year round.  The governors who perpetrate these crimes against democracy (for crimes are exactly what they are) know they are slowly but systematically destroying the founding fabrics of our existence as a nation.  As Martin Luther King Jr. said: “It is not so much when bad people speak as when good people fail to speak out that the cause of evil advances”.

The question of fair and free elections at the local government level is also inextricably linked with autonomy for local governments in terms of fiscal allocation.  That, of course, has its pros and cons and whenever it is raised in the corridors of parliament one is confronted with the argument that the governors will kill such an amendment at the state level.  Local government autonomy is a loaded gun which one will defer for another occasion.

Each day before commencement of proceedings in the House of Representatives there is a prayer the second paragraph of which requests God to “Help us with thy grace to do only those things that will promote the unity, happiness and prosperity of Nigeria”.  This is a prayer which I believe every Nigerian should say before the start of the day’s job.  If I had been involved in drafting that prayer, I would have requested the insertion: “Help us with thy grace and grant us courage”.  Courage is in short supply in Nigeria.

Every society gets the government it deserves; so if the people are passive and spineless, the government will continue to wobble and flounder.  It is against this backdrop that it becomes incumbent on all of us, but more especially the elected representatives in the National Assembly, to muster the courage and amend the Constitution and domicile all elections at the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

The National Orientation Agency and civil society groups must get involved in people sensitisation. This writer is under no illusion that inappropriate action or inaction on our part could crash the very edifice we are trying to build.  There is a popular saying that unless we get to the root, we will never be able to change the fruit.

Dr. EDDIE MBADIWE, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Lagos.