By Adebisi Onanuga
Heads of local government administration in Lagos State have been urged to take advantage of the Constitution and other relevant laws in the discharge of their functions to ensure optimal service delivery.
Permanent Secretary, Local Government Establishments, Training and Pension Office, Abiodun Osi-Efa gave the advice at the opening of a two-day workshop on Project Management organized for Council Managers, Council Treasurers and Council Engineers in collaboration with Fatoo Limited.
“I expect them to restrict themselves to those provisions in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the extant laws as they apply to local government administration.
“We have those that are concurrent and those that are residual. We are trying to iron all of those things out and we know that, with time, those in charge at the legislative arm of the various levels of government, they would be able to handle that”, he said.
On way forward for local government administration in the state, Osi-Efa said plans are on-going to take full advantage of the return of autonomy of council administration by the federal government.
“We are looking at how the autonomy will play out and at the end of the day, we will be able to reposition the councils and officials we have at the local government council level in order to enhance their performance”, he said.
He remarked that so far, the heads of local government councils have performed creditably well.
He said the training programme will help to bridge the gap between council management and the grassroot adding, “that is why we brought them together believing that a couple of things will be learnt by them from this workshop. Because there is always room for improvement, they would be able to apply some of these things they have learnt to their workplace, their staff and of course, their performance will improve”.
Co-Director of Fatoo Limited and facilitator of the workshop, Engr Femi Odunukan said the programme was organized to ensure that things get better at the local government level.
Pointing out that the administration of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is very passionate about building capacity and developing the grassroot.
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“It was identified that there is opportunity to add value to what they are doing. By re-enforcing and refreshing them on project management, they can no do things better.
“We look at local government administration in different part of the world, we look at local government councils in United Kingdom (UK), Canada for instance, we look at what they are doing and we look at Oshodi local government Is doing. We compare them, and it was clear to everybody that our population is so large, and that in other countries, they have small population in local government areas and they have been able to manage them effectively. Clearly, the only way to get better is to get a workforce that is well trained and well equipped to work better and do things better.
We look at project management, the risk, the value and procurement, we identified the product that we need, we identified the scope of work and because of the fact that we need to get value, we ensure that what we are delivering is what will add value to the lives of the people”, he said.
Kola Akomolede, another Director of Fatoo Limited said the takeaway from the programme is for everybody to realize the need to participate actively in things happening around them.
“A lot depends on us as a people and we should collaborate to make things better in Nigeria. Those foreign countries we travel to always are only attractive to us because in those places, people play their respective role to make things work and their society better”, he observed.
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