29 August 2008
editorial
Lagos — The questions of what ought to be the appropriate relationship between the 774 local government councils recognised by the 1999 Constitution and the people of the 36 states and Abuja which the council Chairmen represent, re-echoed messily and disgracefully in Abuja, the federal capital recently.
As was revealed during a workshop organised by some Northern States' LG Chairmen in the FCT, rather than being the beacon of hope and development to the nation's rural dwellers, the local governments have instead turn out to be veritable drain pipes for the nation, and their Chairmen, remorseless parasites who, working alone or in conjunction with State Governors, simply siphon the trillions of naira that are statutorily allocated them by the Federal Government.
As has been suspected all along, what the council Chairmen throughout the federation have been doing, at least in the last eight years of return to democracy, is to collude and share out their allocations for mere creature comforts at the expense of rural dwellers that they are obligated to cater for.
If this sounds like a blanket indictment, it might do to listen to what Mrs. Farida Waziri, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) who delivered a speech at a workshop, had to say about the nation's councils and their Chairmen.
She accused councils' chairmen of misappropriating an astonishing N3 trillion in the last eight years of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration. In a rebuke reminiscent of former Finance Minister, Nenadi Usman's blanket indictment of past States Governors, Waziri alleged that most of the LG Chairmen lived ostentatious lives mostly outside their council areas in the city and state capitals, only surfacing in their jeeps "to pay salaries and share other monies, and disappear until it is time to share the next subventions".
The paralysis that pervades LGs is because the Chairmen are completely disconnected from the people they are supposed to serve. She said that the old argument that service could not be delivered to the grassroots because of shortage of funds could no longer hold because of the whooping amounts that accrue to the councils yearly. Put simply, our local governments and those who run them have become a cesspool of corruption.
The question now is: Why has this state of affairs lingered on? Why have our countrysides become graveyards for the old, the infirm or the insane while monies adequately provided for the development of these areas simply end in the pockets of rapacious agents of the political class? Why is it that the local government creation that was designed to bring development closer to the grassroots has now turned to source of enrichment for unconscionable carpet-baggers who are content to suck the blood out of compatriots?
Many factors account for this. But the major factor has to do with the essential character of Nigerian politicians who see every public office as a veritable avenue for self aggrandizement and a cash cow. The fact that there exists, hardly any form of oversight mechanism by councilors who themselves are mostly compromised makes matters worse.
Another reason why our LG system is moribund may well be the existence of the joint local government/states accounts system that obligates council chairmen to depend on the say-so of governors and state assemblies before they can access their subventions.
Other reasons may be the political patronage system that simply has local government administrators as extensions of state governors' spheres of influence. There have been reported cases of State governors who simply get their council chairmen-stooges to sign for their subventions which are then disbursed to them in part without complaints.
The end result is that our local government areas lack the basic infrastructure like schools, roads, water, and hospitals that fall within their fiscal schedule and competence to execute.
Perhaps it is because of the lucrative nature of local government chairmanship positions that most state governors are reluctant to conduct proper elections into those seats, preferring instead to appoint lackeys as care-taker chairmen. By this, the care-taker committees are beholden to no one but the governors that appointed them.
As matters stand, there is need for a thorough local government reform programme that will make those who run this critical tier of government properly accountable to the people who elect them. We suggest here that this reform could take out the local government system from the control of the Federal Government in terms of their numbers and revenue allocation and leave it to states to run their councils as part of their executive briefs.
While this is being considered, the EFCC should seriously wade into the matter of how an astonishing sum of N3,313,534,856,541.79 allocated to the 774 local government councils in the country were spent with hardly anything to show for it. Those who are responsible for this grand theft must be brought to book quickly. Meanwhile, states that have so far refused to conduct local government elections more than one year into the life of this administration must do so. This way, it would be easy to point fingers at the real people who are actually under-developing Nigeria and subjecting our rural dwellers to grinding poverty in the midst of plenty.
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