Only political solution can resolve local government quagmire in Nigeria —Akande, Ibadan South-west LG boss

The chairman of Ibadan South-West Local Government Area, Hon. Kehinde Akande, is a second-term local government boss, and he marks the first year of his second term today. In this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, he speaks on local government administration in the country, solution to the crisis bedeviling third tier of government, among other issues. Excerpts:

How would you describe the last five years that you have been the chairman of Ibadan Southwest Local Government Area?

Firstly, I will give thanks to almighty Allah for sparing our lives till today and making us to be counting what we have been able to do, my thanks go to all the political leaders in Ibadan southwest local government in particular and all the political leaders in Oyo state in general, led by our amiable governor, Engr Seyi Makinde that deemed it fit that someone like me could be chosen to lead this local government. Like we all know in our political system in Nigeria, it has not been easy, before you assume a position if you have what you want to do like a game plan it will be easier for you to achieve and I believe that the game plan we had before coming into this seat has really helped us to get to where we are today.

To many people, the local government as a tier of government has not really performed to expectation, what is your reaction to this assertion?

Talking about the third tier of government we all know in our constitution that there is the federal, the state and the local government, but when we are talking about the functionality of local government it depends on what angle we are looking at it. If you are looking at it from the way Governor Seyi Makinde is conducting the business of the state, which has made people to be giving kudos to him then you will see that pulling resources together for even development is paramount to him and this is what has been going on. If we look at some instances, some roads in the local government and looking at what it takes to repair a road in any street now, it runs into billions of naira, no matter what allocation a local government is having it might not be feasible for that local government to do it except pulling resources together to make sure that we have a viable and sustainable community. So if we are talking about having the third tier of government, that is what the constitution says, but not just having a third tier of government that wont be functioning but if you devise a means and way that you could pull resources together for developmental purposes, I think that is what the governor has been doing.

The Supreme Court judgment on local government autonomy was delivered almost one year ago but it is yet to be implemented, what do you think is the way out of the quagmire?

When we talk about the autonomy of the local government, we must have one thing in mind, all we want is development, all we want is for our community to be viable, whichever way to achieve it, the end result, which is development, is what is paramount to every citizen of the local government, security wise, economic wise. The federal government went as far as going to the Supreme Court for the autonomy of the local government, people are blaming the state but we are not looking at the federal government itself, what have they done to actualize what the Supreme Court judgment said? Secondly, what Governor Seyi Makinde is telling the federal government is that there are more important issues that need to be attended to, not just giving autonomy alone. Is this the way the government of the country supposed to be run? There are a lot of things that are not right. An example is this, Oyo State is one of the biggest states in terms of land mass and population, we have 33 local government areas in Oyo state, there are states that are not even up to half of the state and we almost have equal local governments and you want to base giving money to these local governments on that. If you go to the south-south area where we have oil wells and making money but what about other mineral resources in other states? There are a lot of mineral resources in Oyo State that the federal government is not tapping for the benefit of the people. Another one is the issue of VAT, look at what Lagos State, Oyo State, Ogun State are generating as VAT, what percentage of that money is coming to the states? If we juxtapose it and look at some other states in the north that they don’t generate one tenth of VAT that Oyo State is generating and they are getting more money than Oyo State, so there are a lot of things that the federal government needs to look into and that is what our governor is saying that we should not put the cart before the horse, let us sit down and work out a modality that will look even and be just to everybody, that is what he is saying, he is not saying that local government should not be able to stand on their own.

How do you think we can amicably resolve this issue?

One of the ways that I can think of now is for us to come to a round table, let us look for ways and modality to solve all these problems. Look at insecurity in the country for instance, there are some local governments that they are not functioning because of insecurity, in Oyo State, look out how much and the efforts that the governor is putting into making sure that the state is one of the secured states in the country. There are a lot of things behind the issue of insecurity, apart from hunger which insecurity is what brought it and poverty, so I believe the way forward for us in Nigeria is for all of us irrespective of tribe or religion to come together with utmost good faith, with all sincerity then we can map a way forward for the country.

Are you now suggesting a political solution to this issue rather than the legal solution being sought by the federal government?

We need more of political solution than just going legal, going to court asking for the implementation of judgment. Even many of our courts are now being politically motivated. Do we have the independence of judiciary? Because if you look at most cases now in court, if you belong to a particular political party and you have a case in court, you are sure of winning it and that shouldn’t be the case. It is the egg before the hen, or the hen before the egg? So I believe political solution is the way forward and it is through this that we can begin to draft the constitution the way to move the country forward.

How have you been able to impact on the lives of the people of Ibadan South-West Local Government in the last over five years?

God has enabled me with the capacity, the courage and the support of good people of Ibadan south-west to come forward as the chairman, we have a blueprint because we prepared not to fail and that is why we are not failing. We know what our communities need, we know what we need to prioritize and what came first on my list was security and to God be the glory our local government, in terms of security, we are right there. We know that with adequate security in the community, development will follow. We are also looking into development of our area with the provision of healthcare, with the little resources and the support of the state we are able to make sure that our health facilities are running perfectly. We know how restless the youth could be if they don’t have anything doing, we have produced training centres like skill acquisition centre for them, we can boast of having three functional vocational skill centres in our local government and this has greatly reduced the restlessness of the youth and gave them hope for a better tomorrow. We look at people that we can consider as not doing well economically in the society and come up with empowerment programmes and as we are empowering the youth, we also empower the grown up ones, even the retirees to make sure that they could put food on their tables and we have done this in many ways. We have also played a major role in developing our schools to make sure that our kids get the best of education, last year we had coaching classes for the students in the council, so that during the holiday they don’t have to be roaming the streets and I am very happy to say that it has been something that other local governments were copying from us. We can boast of sending over 20 students from this local government to polytechnic, we gave them scholarship and we are looking at the schools under our jurisdiction to make sure they have conducive learning environment. We know we cannot do this alone, that is why we called on some philanthropists in our local government and they have been coming to our aid. We don’t stop on education alone, we go into our communities where they need boreholes, public toilets, transformers we have been providing for them. There is a particular party member and community leader that donated boreholes for the community, so we are not sitting down to lament that we don’t have enough resources, it doesn’t have to be the physical cash alone, going out spreading the tentacles of good things for the community and going out to achieve and Ibadan south-west local government is very blessed with human resources that we are harnessing for the development of our community.

How do you select the beneficiaries of the programmes that you claimed to have held for the people, based on party lines or other affiliations?

All our developmental strides in the local government have never toed the party line because we believe that the government is for everybody, irrespective of which political party one belongs to. Talking about the students we sent to polytechnic and all these technical schools what we do is that we organized coaching classes for them and at the end of the coaching period we had examination for them, we also go to the schools in our domain to find out about the diligent students there, we don’t ask them which party their parents belong to or which ideology do their parents hold, what we are after is getting the best pupils and students that are ready to further their education. Initially, we were looking at 20 people but over 150 were qualified before we could pick the 20 which is something we are trying to do within our limited resources.

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