The Nation Newspaper

Tag: council autonomy

  • Alaafin stresses council autonomy

    Alaafin stresses council autonomy

    The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, has urged state legislatures to support the National Assembly’s efforts at granting autonomy to local governments.

    Oba Adeyemi spoke yesterday when members of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) from Afijio, Atiba, Oyo East and Oyo West local government areas, which constitute Oyo Federal Constituency, visited him at his palace.

    He said: “The quest for deeper and viable democratic instrument, which will create the means for regular interactions between the people and the government for proper service delivery and alleviation of poverty among the local population, necessitated the idea of unfettered autonomy for local governments in the country.

    “Many of the democratic nations of the world, including the United States of America, Brazil and India, have come to terms with the need to strengthen local governments and make them functional in scope and operation. The socio-economic reality of the modern world has imperatively compelled every serious nation to improve the standard of living of the local population through a viable and efficient local administration.”

    Oba Adeyemi noted that despite the desperate economic notion behind colonialism, the British colonial government in Nigeria, following the amalgamation of 1914, realised the need for a robust governance at the grassroots.

    He added: “Regrettably, the development of the grassroots, which should always be the concern of every responsible and responsive political system, has not been the primary focus. Development and participation have continued to escape people at the grassroots. Development remains insignificant if it does not positively affect lives of those in the periphery of decision making arrangement.

    “Local governments in Nigeria were created as the third tier of government whose objectives are to ensure effective, measurable and efficient service delivery to the people. Why then are these genuine motives being stultified, council workers and rural dwellers made to suffer for the unjust cause?”

    Ojo said local government autonomy would engender rapid transformation of the grassroots, unlike the present situation of stunted growth and inaction.

    He added that grassroots development will reduce rural urban drift, congestion and criminal propensity in urban centres.

    Ojo said: “If autonomy is granted local governments, there will definitely be a reduction in rural-urban drift, which will equally reduce organised crime in the country. Council workers would not be owed salaries for months, as is presently the case in the states.”

  • Niger  Speaker: Lawmakers not in support of council autonomy

    The Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Hon. Ahmed Marafa Guni, has said that legislators are not in support of full autonomy for local councils due to their lack of financial capacity, political will and management of managing its resources.

    But, the state chapter of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) protested against the granting of full autonomy and the scrapping of the joint state/local government account in Minna.

    Guni said full autonomy to local government failed in Niger state when Governor Abubakar Sani Bello tried to experiment the process in 2016.

    Guni spoke when he received members of NUT who were on a peaceful rally to press home the management and funding of primary education. He said that nobody will support the total autonomy of local government.

    Guni added: “Using Niger state as a case study, the Executive Governor experimented by granting autonomy to the local GovernmentIn the state and they failed dismally. Some of the local government areas during this period owner their workers series of salaries which at the end, the state government had to intervene to rescue the system.”

    The Speaker said unless the state government takes over the payment of primary school teachers, most local government councils will fall in debt if granted full autonomy, “most local governments were worsely affected in Niger state during the few months of practising full autonomy and unless the state governments take over the payment of Teachers salaries, there is no way local government councils will be able to pay their teachers salaries.”

    He said àny institution that neglect primary education is heading for doom assuring the Unionists that their request wild be looked into especially when the constitution review is still in process.

    The Chairman of the Niger state chapter of the Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Ibrahim Umar who led the peaceful protest to the state House of Assembly expressed fear that if full autonomy is granted to local government councils, the school system will witness poor funding and total neglect.

    He said that the Union is not against local government autonomy but they are concerned that any attempt to handover primary school education through full autonomy to local governmeñt councils will amount to consigning primary education to the abyss of total collapse.

    Umar stated that the position of the Union is that the payment of salaries of primary school teachers be taken off by state governments stressing that the only way to pull the dwindling primary school system out of the woods is for the payment of salaries of primary school teachers to be handover to state governments.

    “We wish to reaffirm our position and call that the payment of salaries of primary school teachersn be taken over by state governments in order to prevent the education sub sector from imminent collapse. We cannot afford to continue to tie primary education, the fate of its teachers and the future of the pupils to local government councils.”

    The Chairman then appealed to the Speaker of the Niger state House of Assembly to facilitate the amendment of appropriate laws and make adequate budgetary allocations to the education sub-sector to enable the state government to redouble her efforts in the provision and management of primary education.

     

  • No room for council autonomy, says APC candidate

    The  House of Representatives candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Ifako/Ijaye Constituency, Lagos State, Dr. Elijah Adewale, has flayed chairmen of local governments for agitating for council autonomy. He said the agitation smacked of lack of the understanding of federalism.

    The flag bearer said that autonomy will lead to financial recklessness at the grassroots.

    Adewale said the local government system needs  men and women of integrity to run grassroots administration.

    He said:  “When I get to the House in June, by the grace of God, and somebody raises a bill on financial autonomy for the council administration, I will work with other like minds to kill it. What we need in our councils are resourceful and incorruptible people to generate resources and manage them properly”.

    Adewale added: “Some of our council chairmen are bereaved of ideas. They only know how to spend, but do not know how to generate. They only know how to award contracts, but do not know how to execute them”.

    The APC candidate promised to set a standard and fight for the establishment of well equipped library in the local government for thye benefit of the youths.

    He stressed: “I always weep every morning when I see fibrant youths in the local government merely arguing by the newspapers’ stand and doing nothing.”

    Adewale also promised to sponsor a bill for the setting up  of a mortgage bank where small and  medium scale enterprises and artisans can get loans without interest to run their businesses.

    He also promised to change the orientation and perception of the youths toward self employment.

    Dr. Adewale, a pure grassroots politician, who runs the most successful private institutions in the local government, proffered: “Unfortunately most of our youths only think of how to be employed. This is not just possible and feasible except we want to deceive ourselves.