By Abdulkadir Iyanda Jimoh
The suicide done to the Local Government governance in Nigeria cannot be underestimated. Our future plummeted with a series of local and national vices because our system was so weary that citizens felt cheated, neglected, and degraded.
The Local Government Councils must be decentralized, autonomous, independent, accountable, creative, strong, and self-sustaining for the benefit of national development and poverty eradication in Nigeria.
It is a known fact to every sundry Nigerians that the closest Government to the people is the Local Government Council. And to run an inclusive and progressive rule in a democratic dispensation the people at the grassroots must feel the impact and reality of the government.
The unrest we are witnessing in every corner of this country can only be traced back to the systemic degradation of the Local Governments in that most parts of the country became lawless communities as a result of the impoverishment of the third tier of Governance in Nigeria.
The disservice this has done to the nation’s harmony is yet to be felt. If care is not adequately taken, the rise in insecurity may swallow the country within a jiffy. And if not for greed and inhumane ideology, why would the power be taken from people and expect society to remain calm and peaceful? People will groan and fight back with whatever tools they have.
In today’s Nigeria, we have already deceived ourselves into a state of coma, apart from the high rate of insecurity that’s widespread, we are already feeling famine and hardships that are not justifiable with our blessings as a nation.
It is clear that most of these challenges are fueled by a lack of or inadequate resources that should be evenly distributed to the large chunk of the masses of society emanating from corruption. There are uneven distribution of wealth and resources, and the gap between have and have not is too wide. This is inimical to the peace and progress that we so cherished.
Meanwhile, if we continue like this deceiving ourselves further, we will still feel the agony of our unfaithfulness and denial of injustice in the next decade. The problem of Nigeria is a compounded one, and it seems like every 10 years the situation is becoming very terrible and unbearable. We must hold every leadership of this country to be more accountable.
However, Democracy should be about dialogue, tolerance, inclusion, participation, positive networks, and leadership committed to the service and progress of the nation. But our Government has failed to put the people at the center of engagement, planning, and politics.
The recurrent issues on the leadership and inactive of the local government councils in Nigeria have raised several concerns and legal actions on the part of the Federal Government to give them more constitutional backing so that they will be buoyant enough financially and in any other area of technicality to address the local decadences. However, this has met several setbacks from the system that empowers only the rich and the privileged.
At this time, and as you all may know, every organization, government, or nongovernmental need good, confident, courageous, focused, creative, and Godfearing leadership to inspire, motivate, and guide the people to achieve the desired results. Such leadership must have character, be able to inspire others, command respect, have commitment and empathy, and it must be strong without being ruthless. Such leadership required by the people at this critical time in our development which must be generous without being extravagant, must have initiative, capacity to listen, passion for work, high morals and level of responsibility, self-discipline, and willingness to learn from all classes of people.
Truly, we have made fools of ourselves through our decisions marred by morondic plunders, laziness, and immediate gratifications during an electioneering process in the past. Nigerian institutions particularly the local government councils require selfless, dynamic, strategic, and sacrificing leadership to lead it out of the cycle of poverty, terminate the arrogance of power, and promote fiscal discipline, and democratic political structures at the local level.
We also need local government councils that will pay very serious and sustain attention to the area of internally generated revenue, to reduce over-dependence on statutory allocations just to empower them to be able to meet the high expectations of the people at the grassroots. It must be clear that the government can only generate revenues from people you care for and bring about the improvement to their lives.
We must understand and try to appreciate the importance and relevance of the local government council to rid this country of perennial poverty and want. The Local Government has been strategically placed to care for the well-being and welfare of the people, especially the masses of this great nation, being the government closest to the people. The impact of this tier of government is felt almost immediately and directly daily.
And it also has the greatest potential to address the needs of the poor and most vulnerable in our society. It is a veritable instrument for ensuring that the masses constitute and contribute to the center of development through greater empowerment and participatory decision-making process.
Meaning that our local government council is an integral part or indispensable for effecting good governance and accelerated development in Nigeria.
It is imperative to note that, we need a Local Government system that is decentralized, autonomous, independent, accountable, creative, strong, and self-sustaining with altruistically diligent and honorable leaders who will be administering or piloting the affairs of the Local Government Areas to excellence. It will interest you to know that, most of our present national leaders had their political beginning at the local government levels.
We are where we are because the majority of these people siphon our resources and knock down the system to suffocation through embezzlement of funds, legalization, and conversion of government property to personal use and wealth. These are the majority of the people who sit at the helm of affairs of our nation today.
The Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) should not be afraid to address our problems with tenacity and courage. This body needs to organize more community awareness campaigns to sensitize civil society as to their rights and responsibilities as regards the performance of our elected leaders. Thanks to Elite Network for Sustainable Development (ENetSud) in Kwara State who has done a thorough job and a lot through their Citizens Enlightenment and Mobilization Program (CEMP).
The ALGON and Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) have a crucial role to play in the area of intergovernmental relations in Nigeria, any step to chastise a particular Chairman for nonperformance or embezzlement will go a long way in addressing the decadence in our local government governance or system.
Most importantly, not only did most states of our federation contribute nothing, in breach of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but they diverted and devised dubious programs, legislation, and plans by which they took substantial amounts of money or allocation due to the local government governance and its development. The State Governments hindering the potential of the local government from working and stealing their funds, and this is one of the greatest forms of disservice the present and past governors have been carried out in our so-called democratic governance in Nigeria.
This resulted in Nigerians not receiving the due service from our public officers, our public officers result to acting like overlords. Nigerians have for long felt shortchanged by the quality of the service delivery in our local communities by the public office holders. Nigerians deserve better, the wealth our God has bestowed upon this nation is enough to work for every citizen irrespective of his/her beliefs or history.
The National Assembly’s conspiracy on constituency projects which they work with ministry officials to embed funds (Budget padding) in the national budgets and award the same contracts/projects to themselves or their agents/cronies, and most of these projects end up being abandoned is a story for another day.
Every sundry must be very concerned about the high level of corruption seen as endemic in Nigeria, the case of ethnic conflicts, terrorism, banditry, and kidnapping, and the total lack of consistency and continuity in our national government programs and policies is a big challenge. And this host of challenges is very inimical to our growth, development, and efforts on poverty eradication.
Today, in Nigeria who is to be blamed for our societal decadence? Where majority of the public office holders or public servants have been infected with the stings of corruption and are found in the clusters of “professional incompetence”.
It is a pity that we run a system that empowers a small portion of the population and leaves others with all sorts of agony, poverty, and pains. It means that all the prosperity of this country through annual and recurrent budgeting landed in individual purses or pockets as we can see recently in the case of our National Assembly.
To our political soldiers and grassroots political negotiators, the majority of you are the problems, you draw us back than the so-called politicians because of your laziness, corrupt mind, and selfish interest. As a grassroots politician, nobody is pushing you against your Governors or benefactors or whatever you call them. But every elite must be reasonable enough to make public officers accountable, responsible, and truthful to the masses who elected them to office. If this set of individuals become more accountable themselves, Nigeria will receive liberation.
And your over-dependence on politicians for peanuts is the reason people at the apex misbehave and take themselves as overlord on our rights and “welfarism”, this is one of the bases why the Local Government Councils have been knocked down to death, and every right-thinking Nigerian will agree that the ratio of have and have not had now stood at 5:95. This is a big challenge to the national development.
Arguably, the countries that break the shackles of underdevelopment are the nations that have leaders that are focused and that closely and tightly keep a strong team led with great vision and undiverted efforts and commitment like in Europe, China, and in the Middle East like Dubai. We must not allow Nigeria to be shipwrecked. We must bequeath a united, sound, vibrant, prosperous, and great Nigeria to our children and the succeeding generations. The time is now!
The harm our public officeholders have done in the past which the people and the able men of this great nation have been turned into puppets and where hunger and agony are the way of life is a systemic and extractive system of governance inflicted on us in the last 5 decades. What is happening today too will not be an immediate effect, we are going to reap it maybe in the next decade or so. Everybody must take redress, our governments must be accountable.
Nonetheless, one of the wild goose chases common in this so-called democratic governance in Nigeria is that, in our developmental and empowerment program, we have started to do a lot of virtually irrelevant and unthinkable programs that put common Nigerians into advanced poverty like the callous empowerment program employ and adopted by many states and the members National Assembly. Most of these State Social Investment Programs are suicide on the potential of our economy to grow and advance.
Moreover, we have been faced with a series of challenges, the state and federal government previously from past governments till date promised heaven and earth to assuage our state and national issues with their midas touch but failed. Presently, nothing to show for it, our problems ranging from insecurity, economic downturn, poor infrastructure and amenities, poverty, and ignorance remain the same or unavoidably sliding deep into peril. Nigeria has plummeted with several disgusting issues not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.
It must become understandable as Lanre Osho succinctly put it in his book “My Random Thoughts: A Wake-up Call to the 10th Kwara State House of Assembly”: “Politics is too important to be left with the politicians alone. It is a life and death matter. It affects virtually every facet of life. It affects food production, education, health, peace and war, poverty and underdevelopment etc”.
So, don’t sit down dey look!
Written By:
Abdulquadir Iyanda Jimoh,
abdulquadir@amolese.com.ng.
+2348145964151.
