By Chinelo Obogo
The Special Adviser to Governor Bassey Otu of Cross River State on General Duties, Ekpenyong Akiba, has said there is no provision in the law that makes it mandatory for the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) to be consulted before amendments are made to legislations relating to the Cross River State Independent Electoral Commission (CROSIEC).
Akiba who is a lawyer said this in a statement in Lagos where he is currently attending the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Conference.
He was reacting to a press release by the Cross River State Chapter of IPAC dated August 28, 2024 and titled: “Undemocratic Amendment of Electoral Law: A Betrayal of Public Trust”, in which it condemned the Cross River House of Assembly’s recent amendment to the CROSIEC law without input or hearing from political parties. It demanded for an immediate repeal of the amended law.
But Akiba countered the position of IPAC, describing their argument as baseless. He said: “There’s an existing judgment of the apex court of the land mandating all states without a democratically elected local government to conduct local government elections within three months from the date of the judgment or forfeit monthly allocations accruing to their LGAs.
“Certain provisions of the former CROSIEC law would have caused serious hardship to the implementation of the judgment of the apex court.
“The Cross River State House of Assembly has the powers to make and amend laws with respect to items on the concurrent legislative list and Local government election is one of such. The state legislature believes in the rule of law and acted promptly to comply with the existing judgment of the Supreme Court. There is no law that stipulates that IPAC must be consulted before CROSIEC law can be amended.
“It must be noted that it is not all the sections of the former law that suffered amendment. Only relevant sections were amended to bring the law up to speed with the judgment of the apex court. The government of Cross River State is poised at full implementation of the Supreme Court judgment and there’s no going back on that.”
Akiba urged IPAC to support CROSIEC in their efforts to conduct a credible, free and fair election in the state, now that plans are underway for the LG poll.
“This is not the time to begin to find unnecessary fault. Let IPAC support CROSIEC to entrench and bring back to life grassroots democracy in Cross River,” he said.
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