A former Secretary of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) in Kaduna State, Alhaji Kabiru Jarimi, has faulted former Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s claim that his administration did not interfere with local government funds during his tenure.
Jarimi, who also served as Chairman of Kaduna South Local Government during El-Rufai’s administration, described the former governor’s statement as misleading. He alleged that local government funds were frequently deducted under various pretexts without the consent of the councils.
Speaking in an interview with journalists over the weekend, Jarimi said, “I was shocked by El-Rufai’s comment because local government funds were deducted without our approval. Most of the deductions targeted Southern Kaduna LGAs. We never got our full allocations under El-Rufai. His government kept introducing policies to deduct funds unnecessarily. I even considered resigning. At times, we had no funds for overhead costs after paying salaries.”
He further explained that although El-Rufai often justified the deductions as necessary to settle workers’ salaries, additional withdrawals were made through other mechanisms.
The former council chairman cited the creation of the Kaduna Capital Territory Authority, Zaria Metropolitan Authority, and Kafanchan Municipal Authority as some of the structures used to divert local government funds.
“Salaries were shared 60-40 between the capital territories and LGs around them. In Kaduna South, deductions were made in the name of sanitation, forcing us to remit funds to the Kaduna Capital Territory Authority (KCTA) every month,” he said.
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Jarimi also alleged that local governments outside the capital territories were not spared, pointing to unexplained deductions for security and riot damage as further instances of fund diversion.
“We contributed to a security fund, yet no former LGA chairman can account for how it was used. The same applies to the riot damage fund; no LGA benefited from it. I challenge the former Governor to explain where the money went,” he said.
He, however, commended Governor Uba Sani for reversing several policies introduced by the previous administration. These include the scrapping of the Capital, Metropolitan, and Municipal Authorities, as well as the discontinuation of deductions for security and riot damage funds.
According to him, the current administration has begun to allocate a percentage of the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to local governments, a move he described as a positive step toward financial autonomy at the grassroots level.
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