3 Least Performing LGAs Should Be Punished – Danagogo

There are as usual, countless complaints among stakeholders of poor service delivery by local government councils in Nigeria. The same is true in Rivers State but even more so because, after Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi took over payment of primary school teachers, amounting to over N1.2 billion monthly, many believed that the councils would be better equipped to the delivery of quality services to their people.

What went wrong? What role had the supervising ministry in charge of local governments, chieftaincy and community matters played to check the trend? Infact, is there hope for the rural people, considering the winner-takes-all-approach to local government administration?

Who else to proffer answers to these and many more questions than Dr. Tammy Danagogo, the man who heads one of the most sensitive ministries that touch the lives of the rural people most, Local Government, Chieftaincy and Community Matters.

To do just to all these, Danagogo was guest of The Tide Round Table last week Thursday, and after two hours or so confessed that the experience was worth the while.

Following are first part of excerpts of the epoch encounter which we believe you’ll find most refreshing, cause we did.

Happy voyage.

Just before any question,  I think we ought to have the first thing first. For us, here, we known you.  For the public, who will you say you are?

Well, I am Dr. Tammy Danagogo, that is my name. I’m a lawyer by profession, graduated in 1990, I was called to Bar in 1991 and briefly, I did my youth service with National Concorde. I was like a press man.

I was a judicial correspondent for National Concorde in Lagos. I came back after my National Service. I was in legal practice between 1992 and 2003, 2004. I was elected local Government Chairman.

I finished my service there in 2007 and later 2007, I was appointed a Commissioner for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Community Affairs. So that is me, basically. coincidentally, I had my first degree, masters degree and Ph.D all in law and I had my Ph.D in human rights and dispute settlement – an aspect in public law. That is why I was saying that in totality as a former chairman I know what it means to be a chairman; I know the tricks some Chairmen can easily do. But for Chieftaincy and Community Affairs, a good knowledge of Law and dispute settlement or dispute resolutions is key. What we do there, Chieftaincy and community Affairs, almost, say 50 per cent of it have to do with dispute resolution.

Chieftaincy disputes, disputes between community and oil company and so on and so forth. Basically, that is Dr. Tammy Danagogo.

We can actually describe you as a two time Commissioner for Local Government/Chieftaincy Affairs how has it been?

Well, let me start by thanking you for this opportunity at least to rob minds with you, to brief you as it were what our ministry is doing. It’s been challenging. The Ministry of local Government, Chieftaincy and community Affairs is a very big and challenging ministry.

But by the grace of God, we are up to the task. I have very experienced workers, Directors and other technocrats who have always been of assistance to me whenever I need it. By the grace of God, I also happened to fit into what is required there, as a former Chairman, as a lawyer I think by the grace of God, we are doing well.

Let me quickly take you up on what you said last about the tricks of local Governments, with that kind of tricks, you said you have, one would have expected that local government chairmen, would just keep quiet and do their work the way it should be, but if what the governor said at the last stakeholders meeting is anything to go by no local Government is performing, how did they outsmart you?

From the point you are looking at it, well that is a very good way to look at it. Every person sees every issue from the point he is looking at. Just like the story of the elephant, and the seven blind people. Everybody will tell you based on where he is touching I want to say, I want to be challenged on that, it is not true that all the local Governments in Rivers State are not performing. Even the Governor did not say that. The Governor is challenging Local Government Chairmen to work and to work very hard.

And as a Ministry supervising them, we have always been telling the Governor that it is necessary for the Governor to challenge them.. It is necessary for the governor to admonish them so that they would work harder.

But that doesn’t mean that all the chairmen are not working. I can tell you that there are some chairmen who are doing very well. There are also Chairmen who are not doing well. So I can say that you are correct, infact that some are not doing very well but some are doing well. So they have not out-smarted anybody. We are making sure that those that are not doing well; we will catch up with them. They say that, there are many days for the thief.

You don’t just stand up and begin to just say a Chairman is not performing. You take into consideration all the indices and when you finished and when you make sure every other information you need added to it then you tell the Governor, this is this and you can come out boldly and say this Chairman is a failure. This Chairman is a success. That is why you have not seen me may be come out to tell you that local Government ‘A’ is a thief, B is not doing anything, local Government C is doing that.

I tell you that from our observations and the monitoring, we’ve been doing, some local Governments are doing well.

Such as?

I can tell you that before I start , let me tell a kind of may be lodge a caveat why you’ve not seen us come out with an official result of this Chairmen is the best, this chairman is the worst, before you come out with that kind of result, first and foremost you will have briefed  His Excellency. It is only after you have brief His Excellency that you can now come out and announce to the world.

That is why we hardly do, as a commissioner because the moment I make that statement it is supposed to take a stamp of finality, because the only person who can talk after that is the Governor, if I am talking, it means I have the approval of the Governor.

We don’t announce it because we are still in the process of getting the final approval of his Excellency. On what we have observed, we have been briefing His Excellency. Infact at the last count, even your paper published it.

His Excellency said O.k. Commissioner and Officers of the ministry, you have been assessing them this way. That is your assessment. I also want another team to join you.

He appointed the team he said that, I should appoint the Secretary, which I did. Let them also reconfirm some of these in this kind of thing, before you go out to say, the public officer is bad that is good, it is in law, we say it needs corroboration.

Other persons need to say that, yes, the commissioner said, I also confirm. Infact when we are setting up our own team, usually we make sure, we invite some external bodies so that when I said this Chairman is the worst, naturally, I expected that, he would go round shouting, he would cry wolves. He would say that, oh; the commissioner does not like me; the commissioner did it for one political reason or the other.

Politicians have a way of painting everything, making everything look light. So he would say. But when, he would say that, my only resort would be the fact that, these other people were also part of this exercise and they also said this. That is just trying to lodge small caveat before we begin to address the question of who are the Chairmen performing.

The society expects so much particularly in Rivers State where you have a Governor that is doing so well. He has raised the standard so people expect the kind of corresponding performance from Local Government Chairmen.

But where, I sit, I see how much they get , I see how much they spent on their staff. I see what is left, so, I tailor my expectation to meet what we know they have.

A follow up to this, now there was this Excellence in Local Government Initiative (ELGI) Award and there was an award ceremony where, local Government Chairmen were rated as first, second and third that report was turned to your Ministry and having selected the first, second and third, you must have also selected the worst three. Is it possible for us to have an idea of who they are?

This is one issue that becomes very topical at this point in our stewardship in this Ministry. The Excellence in Local Government Initiative is a sort of a joint exercise between the Ministry, Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA) and corporate organizations.

You know, when I started I told you that, certain local Government, I always as a policy, having been a Chairman I know that once Ministry comes out with a score so many of the Chairmen will challenge it. I started out looking for external collaborators, external Audits, those that will support me, that will support us, so that when I tell you this is the result, I will be telling you that is not some thing that was done by the Ministry alone.

Shell was part of it First Bank was part of it, Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency was part of it, Sosoliso was part of it, so if, I am politically biased against you what about First bank, what about others that is the idea behind excellence in local Government Initiative.

And the idea, very wonderful idea. When the idea came up, after my assessment of the Caretaker Chairmen. Because I did an assessment of the Caretaker Chairmen and I submitted to His Excellency. In submitting my assessment, I told His Excellency what we want to do and we are already talking with Sustainable Development Agency.

We are talking with these organs. Shell, First Bank and so on and the idea, is that when we come out with the result, we will look for a way of giving incentives to those who are doing very well.

And also punishing the worst three. Is a carrot and stick way and His Excellency approved it, to do it that way, because, he also saw that there is a big sense in that way of doing it. But a few things went wrong which we are trying to get right now.

The thing was supposed to be comprised of some of our own people who have been doing the assessment from the Ministry. Five from the Rivers State House of Assembly, and three from all the various collaborating Agencies and corporate bodies that is what we agreed, at the beginning. At the end we couldn’t come out with what we agreed.

The Agencies and corporate bodies just went ahead on their own and started assessing and came out with that result. The Ministry was not part.

You see, a few things are wrong with that result and that is why we could not wholly and even His Excellency cannot wholly rely on it, as a standard basis of this is the best Chairman and this is the worst Chairman. Why you, see when the Ministry’s Assessors are not part of what they did, I can tell you that no Professor any where in the world can come to Rivers state and assess local Government and do it better than us.

I started by saying that I know all the tricks the Chairman can pull. If you just wake up here now, you are an experienced man you have all the knowledge, but it is very easy to just trick you and make you score a chairman very high and how will he do it. All he needs to do is, projects that was executed by his predecessor he will just repaint them and show you that this is my project, Professor for God sake from the U.S. you don’t know what is happening in Abual/Odual, you don’t know what is happening in Akuku-Toru, you just be taken in by it. What a lot of Chairmen do repaint and repackage projects executed by others and present them and you score them based on that.

But if it is the Ministry Officials, who have been assessing we assessed the last Caretaker Chairmen appointed by His Excellency, so the moment you show me a project that was not executed by you, I will say no, we have assessed this project for so so. So that is what I tell people, I’m just the ceremonial head. I just want to make sure I see things for myself, but the technical assessment of the value of projects and everything is done by the technical group.

So that was done without this data. It is the officials in the Ministry who will give you the data of what level of development was there before this Chairmen came in. How much money has this Chairman received? How much of this money is he using to service his staff? We have a nominal roll of all local governments. We have their allocation figures. So nobody can deceive me. Our assessment is usually based on your staff strength and your allocation strength.

Nobody can come here now and tell me that a Local Government like Port Harcourt and Ogu/Bolo we should use the same yardstick to assess them, no. Because virtually, what Port Harcourt gets is almost about double what Ogu/Bolo gets. So can you say, if I am earning N20 million per annum and he is earning N10 million per annum, you expect two of us to do the same thing. It is not possible.

The bigger they earn the bigger the headache.

Yes, but there are parameters. But if PHALGA gets N20 million, what they spent on their staff is, say N5 million, meaning that they are supposed to be left with N15 million. And Ogu/Bolo gets N10 million and what they spent on the staff is N2 million, so meaning that what will be left for him is N8 million. So while assessing what I will be looking at what PHALGA has done with its N15 million and what Ogu/Bolo has done with N8 million.

If Ogu/Bolo man has executed projects worth, say N8 million, I will assess him hundred percent. If PHALGA man with his N15 million left executed projects worth N10 million, I will score him 67 percent or there about. So PHALGA would have executed projects worth N10 million, Ogu/Bolo N8 million. But I’m saying that Ogu/Bolo is a better chairman than PHALGA. One thing is that, we also as a Ministry expect that there is a given percentage of your allocation that you are supposed to give to each sector.

A chairman cannot tell me that he has spent all his money on security. If he is fighting a war, I will know. If there is a war situation I will know. If there is a situation of emergency that requires that high level of expenditure, almost always since I become Commissioner I know that His Excellency will intervene.

So it will not be for him alone. These are some of the things, they used to deceive outsiders. If you come for instance and you don’t know, they can tell you oh; security problem, I did this JTF this, JTF that, but he cannot tell me because, I know what aspect the Governor does and what he does. So these are all the problems we had with that assessment.

These areas were not there. The other part of it was that because this fact that our involvement which is very crucial was not there, although we jointly conceived and worked on the idea.

You find that the issue of punishing those who are not good, was not addressed, because we were not there.

Also the issue of incentive was done wrongly. Because when we conceived the idea, the incentive is not for the chairman, as I am today, if I do very well, and you are giving me a prize, you give to my Ministry, you can say, a dedicated project, then you give us hundred million, we can use it for a dedicated project. You don’t give me money, because all of us were sworn to different forms of oath, code of conduct, this or that code of allegiance and that. And code of conduct is clear, you don’t give incentives to public officers, personally, you can give, for instance, the way we conceived it, there will be some money for dedicated projects handed over to the Chairman, quite well. Go and built or do so or so projects in your LGA and we will come and commission it and announce that this was given to you and your local Government because you are the best Chairman. The mistake was also done there because I didn’t attend, because we wrote to them that we didn’t know when they went round. We didn’t know. We were not part of that. So we said look we have not gone round.  You don’t know how much each of these local governments have, some chairmen show them projects that were done by their predecessors and you are giving personal gift to them and these are not in consonant with the idea of this Excellence in Local Government Initiative.

So we did not attend, His Excellency also did not attend. But right now we are back to the drawing board. They came, they saw reason with what we said and they expressed sorry. We all agreed that is a very good idea, and we need to work together, so we are working together.

Sorry, talking about failure to punish poor performing local Government Area, only recently House of Assembly suspended two local Government Chairmen you have not punished; you have not warned did it embarrass you?

Well it did not embarrass me. You see, we are different organs of government. Every organ of government has its statutory or rather constitutional responsibility. Actually, if you look at the Rivers State, Local Government Law, it is the responsibility of the House of Assembly upon proper cause, may be petitions written to them to investigate any local government and recommend appropriate punishment; petitions were written to them, they investigated their petitions and they came out with their result. It is their statutory responsibility so I cannot be embarrassed because, they have the right to do it.

My own responsibility, like I said, after assessing, I will submit to His Excellency: His Excellency can punish them. In most cases through the House of Assembly. Either on grounds of misconduct, which can include fraud and all that or security ground. And then request the House of Assembly to ratify his decisions.

I will not directly punish them. That is why I told you that when we conceived the Excellence in local Government Initiative, the idea was that, the Ministry would bring five, the Assembly Committee on local Government would bring five persons. The idea is that it is a one in all kinds of exercise. Both the Assembly, the Ministry, external people everybody is now aware, this is the best Chairman, this is the worst chairman.

While the Governor, the corporate bodies are given incentives, Governor and the Assembly will be working towards punishing those who are not performing well. The Assembly don’t need to go back to reconfirm our recommendations of who to be punished, because they were also part of the process.

So are we to say that the ministry has no power to punish any erring local Government Chairman?

The Ministry has powers that are exercised through the Governor. We recommend to the Governor I cannot as a commissioner suspend the chairman. They are only two ways you can punish a Chairman. If not anything you do to him, is like water on duck fowl, The only two ways are; suspend or remove him, that is one.

The second is to detain his money. That is the only way. None of this, I can do without the Governor’s approval. Their allocations as they come from Federation account, the highest it can stay with me are three days. The Governor has given the right. I don’t even need to tell the Governor before releasing it to them. Because, he has delegated me as the Chairman of Joint Allocation Committee. So as soon as the money comes, three days is the highest, then if we are calculating and distributing, highest is three days, we release their money to them.

On no account do you delay it. So if you can’t delay the money you cannot deduct from it, you can’t punish them except you have approval and that must be on a very strong ground. So far we came, we have not delayed any local government Allocation.