CORAFID sets Posers on the Just Concluded Benue Council Polls
The Civil Organization Research Advocacy and Funding Initiative Development (CORAFID) has issued a statement regarding the just concluded council polls in Benue State. According to CORAFID Centre for Research and Innovation, certain aspects of the election should call the attention of well meaning Nigerians:
First:
7 women + 16 men = 32.8 of women representation. To CORAFID, that means we have 17.2% left to attain equal gender representation in elective positions at that level of governance. We congratulate government and the people of Benue for that.
Second:
23 elected chairmen = PDP
0 elected chairmen = to the rest of political parties. To CORAFID, that speaks to a culture of “winner takes all”. We see that this kind of political outcome is possible only in a society that is yet to recognise the value of diversity either on the part of those who should have put in some effort to create diversity or on the part of those that should created a level playing ground for all to feel confident that diversity is valued and promoted. In a society like this, change tends to be feared as if a threat, and difference of opinion suffers censorship in the hands of those who cannot tolerate it.
Caution:
There are many ways to address or confront situations like this. The easiest and least useful is, issuance of press releases to condemn persons perceived to have failed to do well. Surely, people who do so, that is, who issue condemning press releases, may gain ephemeral popularity without adding real value to the system. The hardest but eventually most powerful approach with highest potential to transform a system is, however, the tedious practice of gathering data and analyzing against established best practice standards, and then presenting the evidence persuasively to call for change. This works, eventually!
Recommendation:
CORAFID recommends the use of joint monitoring and appraisal of LGA performance for the duration of the tenure (2020-2022 or 2023) and production of periodic reports that should enable government and the public objectively assess the performance of governance at that tier of leadership. This way, government can be “persuasively” supported to live up to minimum standards of good governance.
