By Okey Lantika
Some stakeholders have x-rayed the local government as the third tier of government and posited that it is dead in most states of the federation. Using Enugu State as a case in point they decried the absolute control of the councils by the State government which has made it impossible for the tier of government to exist independently. A former local government chairman in Enugu State and key figure in the All Progressives Congress, Ozo Joe Mamel described the third tier of government as inexistent and a cesspool of corruption. While Comrade Michael Okeke, a retired civil servant says the tier is a place where local political stakeholders enthrone their surrogates who render returns to them.
Like in most states of the federation local government elections are alien to the nation’s political space and where they are conducted, the results are already known before ballots are cast.
On March 4 2024, the Enugu state commission for local government matters, Deacon Okey Ogbodo issued a public service announcement proclaiming the end of tenure for the local government chairmen and councilors in the 17 local government areas of the state. According to Deacon Ogbodo, “The tenure of the chairmen and councilors of the 17 local government areas in Enugu state formally came to an end on the 4th of March, 2024. Consequently, all the council chairmen are expected to handover to the Head of Personnel Management (HPM) in each local government with effect from today, the 4th of March 2024. This is in line with the extant laws guiding tenure-ship of elected chairmen and councilors in our local council areas.” The announcement came as a surprise to some politicians and incumbent chairmen who were already lobbying to be appointed or retain their positions.
Recently, Governor Peter Mbah reconstituted the Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission, ENSIEC, with Prof. Chris Ngwu as the chairman of the Commission, mandating it to conduct polls for a democratically elected third tier chairmen and councilors. While the people of the state wait for the election, a viral video surfaced from Ezeagu local government council showing empty offices while the workers were supposed to be at work. The video of Ezeagu Local council headquarters was a replica of what obtains in other local councils in the State.
However, as a disaster control measure, the state government dispatched monitoring teams to local council headquarters forcing workers to report to duty. However, most workers interviewed by this medium described their fir brigade measure as unsustainable. “What are we doing here. There is no money to work and there is programme of action” a staff quipped.
A former council chairman of Ezeagu local government area, Ozor Joe Mammel in his reaction blamed the state governments for crippling the local government system in their respective States. Mammel said: “The local government system really never worked and I cannot blame the present state government. It’s just the recklessness of the past governments on the administration of the local governments. Until we have local government administrations that are well founded by the people it will remain in comatose.
” What we do here is that stakeholders nominate a council chairman and that’s why it doesn’t work because it’s not populist. The local government system never existed as far as I know, they are not even allowed to use their resources for the development of their places, they are just ombudsmen for the state government; they just come and collect money and go back and give a percentage of it to the state governments and retain the remaining for themselves.
He continued: “The only thing they do there is to pay staff salaries and those staff only come to work when an allocation is ready for distribution. So the system never existed at all, there is no synergy between the local governments and the state. The issue of local government service commission is just there for staff matters. It’s not about this administration which is going to be just one year in office, but what about the previous administrations, what did they leave behind for this one to follow. What they left is deep corruption in the system and that is the truth.
“The workers come to work, only three times in a month and after that the local government is shut down. Now Governor Peter Mbah has a court order that moved election to October and the system is now being run by the HPMs who are command structures. So one begins to wonder if the so called local government is necessary from the way it’s being run, absolutely a waste of public fund, unless they change their pattern and begin to use the money that accrue to the local governments for the local government developments, because the local government is just a transit, it’s not effective as a tier of government. It is listed as a system of government for democratically elected Chairmen; that is what section seven of the constitution says.
“I’ve been there and during our own time we made everything possible to ensure that our people are happy so that when we come to them for their votes, they can be happy with us, and we were under INEC for elections, but now they don’t go for elections, they are under the State Independent Electoral Commission. The Governor appoints all the members and there is nothing Independent about them. The election does not have a pattern and that is how results will be announced. The results are even written before the elections are held. Unfortunately for Enugu, it’s a one-party state and so there is no need for any opposition party to go there.
“Whoever the Governor anoints or nominates in the party is as good as have won in an election. So the allegiance goes to the person, the stakeholder that nominated him. There is no allegiance to the people at all but to the authority that brought them to power. It’s very bad and if you know the amount of money that accrues to the local government system, you will shudder. Every 15th the Accountant General goes for the federation account meeting in Abuja, they bring it back but where is it?”
A retired local government civil servant, Comrade Michael Okeke said that the major cause of ineffective local government system in Enugu state is the type of council chairmen made to run the system coupled with godfatherism in the state. He said that the local government workers are not motivated to work because of poor pay in a system they know how much that comes into the council accounts every month but are not reflected in infrastructure or service provisions.
Okeke said, “The godfathers are the ones who are angry that the local government system in the state is presently not working because they are the ones that returns were being made to. The godfathers think that people don’t know them but we all know them but pretend as if we don’t know. Some of the council chairmen became visitors of the EFCC and monies were traced to the accounts of benefactors. In the local government councils within Enugu urban, their godfathers include past leaders, failed politicians who were defeated in the past election, brothers and relations to the former Governor. Some godfathers are party chairmen, particularly those in the rural areas.
“The tragedy they have now is that those local government chairmen whose tenure expired were giving out money with the hope that they would be retained in as transition system but it didn’t work. They share the local governments among themselves with a Governor having the upper hand on who to nominate and who not to nominate as a council chairman.”
Source: Drumnewsonline
