The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, on Wednesday, tasked state governments, traditional rulers, and civil society organisations with the need to check the spending of local government (LG) administrations within their domains.
Because the councils’ current structure does not inspire confidence, he contends that something drastic must be done to stop corruption at the council levels.
At the Gombe State Local Government Summit in the North-East state, Olukoyede addressed a diverse audience of activists, traditional rulers, and LG leaders.
He decried the trend that local councils have turned into automatic teller machines for croy public servants who profit from rural residents’ lack of knowledge or lethargy to mine public wealth for personal gain.
Olukoyede also criticised the practice of local government chairmen who only visit their councils once per month to distribute the federal allocation.
He argued that councils should be proactive in providing good governance to the electorate rather than just exist as caricatures.
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He claimed that the EFCC won’t spare any culprits by citing widespread corruption, including the theft of public funds through contract and procurement fraud, direct embezzlement of funds through blatant public spending, and numerous other shenanigans committed by local government officials.
The corruption in our local governments is all too obvious for us to see, according to the anti-graft agency’s chairman, “because a few greedy people have cornered the resources meant for their construction, ill-equipped hospitals that cannot rise to the challenge of modern healthcare delivery, etc.,”
The councils appear to be there to pay council staff members’ salaries and to pay teachers’ salaries in primary schools. No one can determine where the resources go once that is accomplished, but it is well known that most council chairmen visit their council secretariat once per month to distribute the funds from the federal account, and once they are done, they return to their palaces, largely in their state capitals.
Councils have evolved into automatic teller machines (ATMs) for avaricious public officers who profit from the ignorance or lethargy of the rural population by using their public wealth for private gain because the resources that have been allocated to them over the years have not been properly managed.
This attitude is unlikely to change unless a conscious choice is made to accept a new sense of responsibility and financial integrity.
Local council chairmen in the 774 councils in Nigeria should develop the capacity to manage resources and carry out strategic development projects for the benefit of their constituents, he said, with more money coming into local governments after the landmark decision of the Supreme Court that gave the third tier of government autonomy.
” Even though you may have financial autonomy, you must also remember that you don’t have constitutional immunity. Therefore, the use of your resources will be strictly monitored by anti-corruption organizations as well as the state government because it will be the state government’s responsibility to ensure that the resources used by the local government where development projects are supposed to be carried out are responsibly and judiciously used, used, and put into practice.
“So, I am challenging the local government chairmen. You must add value to yourselves and develop yourselves”, he said.
The EFCC chair said that in order to establish a system of accountability at the local level, it must first be done to ensure compliance by ensuring that the councils’ leaders are current with local laws and regulations governing public finance.
He claimed that separation of power must be implemented in the councils to enforce the system of checks and balances. “We discover that most times, the legislative units of the local governments don’t sit, most times, they don’t even work. We’ve seen that in so many areas”, he said.
The chairmen of councils will continue to serve as the only administrators with concomitant risks of due process and accountability, according to Olukoyede, who stated that “without fully expressing the autonomy of the branches of government at the local government level. You serve as chairmen of the local government in addition to the administrators.
As royal fathers, community leaders, even traditional rulers, you have a responsibility to keep an eye on the activities of the local government administration.
Source: Channels TV
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