Any Use For Local Governments?

Those who came up with the idea of three tiers of government must have thought of the convenience in administration of government. Just as the separation of power among the three arms of government – the executive, legislature and the judiciary serves as a check on the abuse of power, the three tiers of government – the Federal, State and local governments must have been conceived to pave way for easy and convenient administration.

In particular, the creation of local government is, by all intents and purposes, to bring government and development nearer to the people at the grassroots. Regrettably however, this objective, worthwhile as it is, appears to have suffered setback in recent times. Unlike in the past when local government areas were a beehive of developmental projects, the modern day local government councils add little or no value to the lives of the people at the grassroots.

In the past, local government used to be the centre of attraction. Due to its viability and effectiveness in terms of developmental projects, the people at the grassroots  hardly depended on State for anything. Those were the era when those who presided over the affairs of the local governments were men and women with conscience, who were always conscious of the needs and plights of their people.

With little resources at their disposal, the olden day local government councils were able to embark on meaningful projects that touched positively on the lives of the citizenry. Apart from electricity which used to be the sole responsibility of the State and Federal governments, virtually all other developmental projects such as roads, boreholes for portable water, fertilizers for farmers at highly subsidized rate, local health care delivery among others were always provided by the local government councils.

Today’s third tier of government appears to be a drainpipe. In spite of high allocations that trickle down to them on monthly basis, only a handful of those at the helm of affairs of the local government councils can point at reasonable developmental projects as their stewardship.

Just two days ago, precisely on Wednesday, the Rivers State governor, Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi frowned at the poor performance of local government chairmen in the State. He said that only five out of the 23 local government bosses have recorded appreciable achievements. Yet, the local government areas are seriously crying for attention and development.

With poverty biting the people very hard, and the social infrastructures at their epileptic stage, and in some areas almost non-existing, some of the youths in the rural areas could not resist the temptations of constituting themselves into security threats to government and the companies operating in their areas. The Niger Delta States are the worst hit.

In the Niger Delta areas, there are several cases too numerous to mention of non-performance at the local government level, with many of the local government chairmen using the state of insecurity in the region to siphon funds meant to develop the local government areas. Ironically, the major reasons for restiveness in some areas are mass poverty and underdevelopment.

Get me right, the poor performance recorded by successive administrations at the local government level is not limited to the Niger Delta region. It cuts across the nation. Even in some States, local government chairmen connive with the State governors to enrich themselves and to line up the pockets of their political godfathers and supporters, using white elephant projects as a cover-up.

It is in view of this that many Nigerians have written off the local governments in Nigeria as a useless, worthless tier of government that has no positive bearing on the lives of the citizenry.

And if truly the local government, as provided in the Nigerian constitution, was created  to address the developmental problems at the grassroots, why then is this state of under-development in the rural areas? Why has the long hand of justice that usually catches up with other political office holders not extended to some of the smart alecs that were once at the helms of our local governments? Or is it that they did not steal enough to warrant their arrest and detention?

I think it is high time we began to probe the activities of those who preside over the affairs of our local governments. There is the need for all the State Houses of Assembly in the country to embark on the assessment tour of the projects being executed by the local government councils in their States with a view to checking the financial recklessness and high level corruption that have made local governments in Nigerian a drainpipe and corruptible tier of government.

Boye Salau