TheCable

YIAGA Africa, a civil society organisation, has criticised the two main political parties participating in the Lagos council elections over the paucity of female representation.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has only four female candidates, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has just one among the 57 hopefuls vying for the seats at local governments (LGs) and local council development areas (LCDAs).

The election will hold on Saturday across 13,323 polling units in the state.

Cynthia Mbamalu, YIAGA’s director of programmes, spoke about the exercise at a pre-election briefing on Friday.

She said even though the parties claimed to have waived nomination forms fees for female aspirants, it did not result in more women as party candidates.

Mbamalu also faulted a gap in the state’s electoral law, noting that the eligibility age for contesting the chairmanship election is 30 — five years higher than the age for contesting the house of representatives.

On his part, Eze Nwagwu, a board member of the civil society organisation, said the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) has failed to make provision for online accreditation for election observers.

He said the challenge will make it difficult for independent non-partisan bodies to play their role.

“How can you ask citizens to apply online for observation, and later you cancelled that and said they should apply with hardcopy just few hours before the election in this age and time,” he said.

“The behaviour of the state independent electoral commission is the reason why a lot of people are asking for their scrapping, but we are committed and optimistic that if we engage the way we engage INEC, the state independent electoral commissions will also improve, and that is why YIAGA and its partners are deploying observations for this local government elections.”