By Timothy Agbor, Osogbo
A former deputy president of the National Union of Local Government Employees in Osun State, Comrade Femi Olanipekun, and the Coordinator of Local Government Pension Forum in the state, Mr. Lanre Fadahunsi, have flayed state governors for opposing the financial autonomy recently granted the 774 local government areas in the country.
The council autonomy is being guaranteed by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit. The NFIU, which was excised from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set June 1, 2019, as the take -off date of the new order, making it compulsory for all LGA allocations to go straight to their respective bank accounts.
The decision is contained in the guidelines released by the NFIU after a lengthy meeting with officials of commercial banks in Abuja recently.
But the Governors Forum in the country rejected the decision of the NFIU, maintaining that it would continue to run join account with local government councils.
Speaking in Osogbo, Olanipekun and Fadahunsi in their separate remarks, accused state governors of running local government councils aground and paralysing them by not duly deducting the allocations meant for them and disbursing it to their administrators.
Using Osun State as case study, they claimed that activities at the 30 local government areas and their area offices in the state had been paralysed while local government workers had been made redundant and unproductive.
According to Olanipekun, the inability of state governors to deduct allocations meant for local government areas and hand them over to council chairmen have grossly underdeveloped the grassroots, especially in Osun State.
Olanipekun, who retired as director in the state’s Local Government Service Commission, said the stores belonging to health facilities across the local government areas in Osun had become empty and the council areas made grossly inactive.
He said operations and works that should be done by local government workers were being taken to the state level, thus making council workers redundant.
He stated that salaries of local government workers were being prepared by the state, a situation he argued should not be.
He, therefore, called for total financial autonomy for the local government councils, saying, “It will go a long way to revatilising the image of the local government areas and bringing development to the people of the state.
The ex-NULGE leader said, “The local government council has enormous task, but it is unfortunate that they don’t get the fund to carry out these tasks. Osun is even grossly affected in this. Here, (Osun), local government activities have been paralysed.
“The state government is now a parasite on the flesh of the local government. If this financial autonomy can be made effective, the LGs will bounce back in terms of development. When you come to the health sector, the store of health facilities are empty. Our local areas are grossly inactive.”
Speaking in the same vein, Fadahunsi said there had not been delivery of government at the local government level.
The leader of the retirees said most state governors depended solely on local government funds to operate and that was why they rejected the financial autonomy ordered by the NFIU.
He said, “It’s indeed alarming to discover that salaries are not prepared in the local government areas in Osun State. The workers are redundant. The governors are unnecessarily intruding into the affairs of the local government.
“Can you believe that engineers at the local government areas in Osun State sign that local government projects are done by them and in the real fact, they were not done. If there should be a change of government in this state, most workers, including these engineers, will be in trouble because most of them sign what they didn’t do. All operations are taken to the state,” Fadahunsi said.
He said the social impacts of what the state government claimed to do were not felt in the local government areas.
“During Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola’s era, we saw what he did in the local government coucils. He bought tractors and equipment for the local government areas. These equipment have been taken away to God-knows-where. Our governors forget that what turns the economy around in the state is the money in the pockets of residents and not what they carry about in bullion vans.
“The allocations that are meant for local government areas should go to them. There are internal auditors and other monitoring agencies to see to the usage of these allocations.”
But the Osun State Government has denied that it had been spending money meant for local government councils to fund projects at the state level.
A former commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in the state, Barr. Kolapo Alimi, said Nigeria is a democratic society and that one of its ingredients is the rule of law.
Alimi said the constitution of Nigeria provides for joint account and that Osun had been honest with the spending of the joint allocations.
“Osun has always ensured that statutory deductions like the allowance of traditional rulers, the salaries of primary school teachers, salaries of local government staff and salaries of Local Government Service Commission are promptly withdrawn from the local government allocations, while the remaining money is used to develop the local government areas,” Alimi said.
He said they started preparing the salaries of local government workers to prevent payment of ghost workers.
“Before, people pay ghost workers but when this was discovered, we involved CHAMS in the preparation of these salaries and this is to weed out payment of ghost workers,” he said.
