A former Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has urged the federal government to scrap Local Governments system, if governors won’t allow the system to function the way it should.
Daily Trust reports that there are 774 local government areas in the country but the efficiency of the third tier of government has been hampered by the weight of controlling and overbearing governors who have been accused of mismanaging funds meant for the administration of local governments.
In the last few months, calls for local government autonomy have increased in Nigeria.
President Bola Tinubu has also supported the calls and in May the government sued the 36 state governors over alleged misconduct of local government funds.
Speaking on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television, on Friday, Ogbeh, a former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said: “What I want to say to Nigerians, if we don’t want the local government system, scrap it, if it were allowed to work, it would have been a fantastic system.”
He said funds and federal allocations sent to Local Governments in the country are disappearing as there are no evidence in the lives of people across the country,
The ex-minister urged the Federal Government to stop the payment of monthly allocations to states whose governors set up caretaker committees for LG administration.
“I can’t be sending you money that disappears. You don’t repair primary schools, you don’t do anything, the money vanishes and they say there are paying workers, for which work? Strolling around in the morning and drinking palm wine? These are the issues. Those failures are creating dangerous problems for the country.”
“Any governor who sets up a caretaker committee should not receive any funds because a caretaker is illegal, by the Supreme Court. Don’t send them cash, deduct their own and keep it,” he said.
