Fallout of Edo LG Poll: National Confab should agree to abolition of SIECs-Braimoh

Senator Yisa Braimoh (who represented Edo North on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from 2007 to 2011) has tasked the imminent National Conference to push for the deletion of the provision for State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) in the Constitution and return the responsibility for conduct of local government elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Braimoh spoke against the backdrop of the just-held chairmanship and councillorship rerun elections in Esan North East Local Government in Edo State in which the State Government and the Edo State Independent Electoral Commission (EDSIEC) allegedly supplanted Hon. John Yakubu of the PDP who won the chairmanship election with Mr Sam Oboh of the All Progressive Congress (APC).
The elected PDP councilors were reportedly given their certificates of return by the EDSIEC Ward Returning Officers but the Local Government Returning Officer who had the responsibility of announcing the winner of the chairmanship election fled from Uromi and the Chairman of EDSIEC, Solomon Ogoh, in Benin announced the APC candidate winner of the election while collation of results was yet to be concluded in Uromi, the headquarters of Esan North East Local Government Area. But in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, Braimoh said that “the pattern of the conduct and results of Local Government elections nationwide in recent years and up to now make it imperative for the forthcoming National Conference to abolish SIECs and return the responsibility for council elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).”
He said the action of the Edo State Government in the conduct and announcement of fictitious result for the chairmanship election in Esan North East Local Government was condemnable and underscored the magnitude of electoral manipulation and democratic flaws at that level of government. Braimoh expressed curiosity that the State Government under Governor Adams Oshiomhole would commission a 30-minute Channels Television Live Broadcast to accuse the State Commissioner of Police and Police personnel of
electoral fraud in the conduct and announcement of results of Esan North East Local Government elections.
According to him, “The entire contraption in Edo State is laughable and the brazen electoral thievery is condemnable.  This is the first time in the annals of election in Nigeria that the perceived winner of State Local Government election would commission a live television broadcast to justify perfidy through diversion of attention by throwing barbs at the Police.”
He lamented that since 1999 to date, results of Local Government elections have been 100 percent predictable in the direction of landslide victory for the party in power in the states, describing the development as a fundamental flaw in our democratic experiment.
According to him, “reasons for this unacceptable democratic flaw are not far-fetched: corruption, winner-takes-all syndrome and the awesome powers wielded by State Governors in the guise of ‘Executive Governor” under the presidential system of government, et al.”
Braimoh said that the national confab would afford the Nigeria people to canvass for the abolition of SIECs, explaining that the confab would circumvent the State Governors’ opposition to the scrapping of SIECs through the normal process of constitution review exercise by the National Assembly and the State Houses of Assembly.