Joint Allocation Account Fails To Achieve Objectives – NULGE

The Rivers State Chapter of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) has declared that the state local government Joint Allocation Account has failed to achieve its developmental objective at the third tier of governance in the country.

The State President of the union, Comrade Franklin Ajinwo stated this in an interview with newsmen at the union’s secretariat in Port Harcourt.

Comrade Ajinwo said the way state-local government joint allocation account is run in most states of the federation leaves much to be desired and called for a favourable sharing of the revenue allocation to the local government councils in the country.

The NULGE’s boss attributed the inadequate development in some council in the country to its dependent nature on the state allocations.

He said “give them direct fund and local government will have adequate development.’ He urged the federal and state governments to support development at the grassroots.

Comrade Ajinwo said that the importance of local government council to national development cannot be overemphasised and  advocated the need for the local governments to be autonomy to strengthen grassroots development.

He said “the issue of local government autonomy is something that every well meaning Nigerian ought to support”.

“The reason is that the architect of local government system had an intention and the intention was to make sure that development interface with the grassroots populace; that is the essence and the idea of the local government system in Nigeria”, he said.

He further said that the essence of the local government system in the country was to see how the grassroots, all nooks and crannies of the country can be reached in terms of development.

Comrade Ajinwo said that development had been hampered at the local government level because they depend on state allocations.

He said that giving local government autonomy would achieve the much desire transformative agenda of the federal government, stressing that by the time development is decentralised to the local government level, Nigerians will see that government is much closer to the people at the grassroots.

The NULGE’s “ boss said in order to achieve this, recognition should be given to the local government with the means to make them stronger to perform this role, all these should be put in place for effective local government administration in the country”.

Stories by Philip Okparaji