National President of Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees(NULGE), Comrade Ambali Olatunji, has indicted state governors as major contributors to rate of insecurity and poverty in the country.
He said in Akure, the Ondo State capital, on Sunday that state governors hijacked all financial resources of local governments leaving them with nothing to create jobs for the citizenry at the grassroots.
Ambali said it was abuse of power for governors to be collecting rates through promulgation of Land Use tax, using the state Houses Assembly as tools to perpetrate the act.
He faulted the claims of governors that local governments could not afford to pay workers’ salaries, saying the state governors deliberately impoverished the local government by cornering internally generated revenue and allocation accruing to them from the Federation Account through securing fake Joint Account
Ambali said: “As at today, you can no longer move from one state to another without initially asking if you will get home safely. Insecurity in the South, East, West and North. This is not the Nigeria of our dream. We are bedeviled by abject poverty, joblessness, hopelessness, threat to the nationhood.
“Everybody now result to ethnic agitation. We have come this far because Nigeria is no longer working. The nation has failed the masses. At 61, Nigeria has abandon her constitutional role in guarantee security and peace in the country.
“This can be traced to the systematic decay and destruction at the local government level. Local government system is the most strategic, most relevant, most popular and most acceptable tier of government in the country.
“As at today, you can no longer see visibly local government performing her role. This is not deliberate, it is as a result of force seizure of local government allocations by political state activists and denial of Nigerian people to freely choose their own leaders at the local government level.
“It can be traced to use of instrumentality of law to coner the internally generated revenue of local government. We you look at our constitution, under residual list, the collective use of local government revenue are clearly itemized.
“But as today, we’ve seen governors using State Houses of Assembly as a lacuna to promulgate illegally, supplus at the state that are contrary and contradictory to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“We need a politically-free and financially dependent local government administration. The local government has been raped over time; it has witnessed systematic destruction as a result of misrule and stealing of local government funds, thereby militating against progressive development at the grassroots level.
He suggested that all states electoral bodies should be scrapped because none among them had ever conducted a free, fair and acceptable poll,while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should take over conduct of local councils elections.
“State is autonomous, why is INEC conducting election their elections? House of Representatives members and senators are coming from local government, why is INEC conducting their elections? Why is INEC conducting governorship election and House of Assembly election. Are they not free?
“So, if we are talking about that,why must we change the goal pole? We are saying we have three tiers of government, we should allow INEC to conduct election that will be credible, transparent and acceptable in Nigeria. Let us give Nigerian people the right to choose their leaders from their grassroots, let us allow governance inclusiveness.
“This(SIEC) is a corrupt agency that has not been performing, thereby denying Nigerians the opportunity to fully choose their leader and what is d implication? If you allow governors to appoint their cronies to be in charge of local governments in Nigeria, it shows that such leader will not be accountable to the peoples because who pays the piper, dictate the tune .
“That is why NULGE is saying it should be scraped and the Independent National Electoral Commission should conduct election in all the 774 local governments. Until we get to this level, Nigeria will continue to witness what it is witnessing today.” Ambali said.