Kunle Adelabu
Council Chairmen in the six Local Government Area (LGA) and Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in Ikorodu Division of Lagos State, Southwest, Nigeria, have called for the need to restructure the revenue sharing formula in the country.
To the chairmen, the sharing formula needed to be adjusted in favour of the local government which, according to them, is the closest to the people and has direct impact on the citizenry of Nigeria, if the local government is to attain its intended purposes.
Builder Sesan Daini, Chairman, lgbogbo/Bayeku LCDA and the publicity officer of the Conference of the 57 Council Chairmen in Lagos State, made this demand while speaking on behalf of other council administrators in the division, at the panel session themed, “Towards an effective Local Government Administration”.
The session was organized by the Concerned Ikorodu Division Youths (CIDY).
“We are aware of most of the challenges highlighted and we are working to address them and thanks to our sympathizers who knew that one or two things are not going right”, he said.
“My submission will not only be applicable to the council chairmen in Ikorodu Division, but Nigeria as a whole.
“Generally, we have our responsibilities as local government chairmen as stated out in the first schedule of the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria and I think everybody that want to criticize the government must first go to that part of the Constitution and study what our functions are because when you even look at some of those things that we are been challenged of, they are totally out of our responsibility and when I look at somebody challenging me for what I’m not supposed to do regardless of age or intelligence, I see that person talking out of ignorance.
“The three tiers of government share responsibilities as stated in the constitution and we do pass to necessary quarters any function that is beyond ours for appropriate actions since we are all government in the country and we support one other to make the lives and properties of our citizens safe and better”.
He said that the major challenge confronting council administration in the country is the way the system was structured and called for restructuring.
“I just want to appeal to everyone on behalf of my colleagues that we are aware that there are issues around local government administration but it is not all about us”, Builder Daini.
“It is about the way the system was designed and that will take me to the sharing of the federation allocation.
“If we take note, we will know that Local government is an arm of government that has direct impact and direct relationship with the people and if we take a critical look at it, we will realize that lots of developments and projects come from the local government.
“Giving the local government the lowest share of the federation allocation will definitely not promote development simply because local governments that supposed to do lots of agricultural development, physical planning and a lot of things that will have employment output and consequent effects on socio – economic development, are collecting less from the federation allocation while those at the centre are collecting the highest part of the money”, Daini said.
“I want to equally say that part of what will help the local government generally is restructuring the federation allocation sharing formula and making sure that the local governments get the highest share and after doing that, I also believe that there should be more internal control for checking to ensure that the monies are used judiciously and not abused”.
Daini also said that the electorate are not engaging elected representatives, especially council chairmen after their elections.
He said that the only way to make the chairmen accountable and alive to their responsibilities is when people that elected them continually engage them and make them remember their electoral promises.
“The involvement of the people is another problem. It is not only about local government alone, generally, people fail to ask questions when necessary”, he said.
“The people only vote and go home for four years without asking questions and they will be waiting for miracles to happen. For any government to be productive and progressive, people need to ask questions and engage them in serious discourse to put them on their toes.
“Constructive criticisms are allowed to make the government awake to its responsibilities but when people don’t ask, what do you expect? People must ask questions about what we ought to do.
“People should keep our manifestos and view our cards diligently and should not do as some people did for political reasons and hid under one name to come up with a research without following the due process of research and came up with a report to rubbish some chairmen and promote some others which is not acceptable”, he said.
Also, Daini, on behalf of other chairmen, commended CIDY for organizing the programme and called for more mobilization of the community in the development of the local government administration.
“We, the chairmen, appreciate this programme and we want the organizers to do more in mobilizing people for subsequent events such as this so as to have more contributions and suggestions and where necessary, criticism that are productive”, he charged.
“Sincerely, I am impressed with the programme but I am not happy with the turn out and that makes me think that people don’t take the issue of local government as seriously as it should be.
“I left a programme to be here because I am of the view that having this type of program and considering the capacity and the wealth of experience of the panelists, we will all have something big to take home”, he added.
