Struggle for LG autonomy: We have lot of obstacles and stumbling block — NULGE President

President of Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) and National Treasure of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ibraheem Khaleel, speaks with SOJI-EZE FAGBEMI on their struggle for local government autonomy, even as Nigerians elect other leaders to form government at all level.

What is the update on your struggle for Local Government autonomy?

The issue of the existence of Local Government as a functional system of government in Nigeria to our union and to all stakeholders in local government system today in Nigeria is the most burning issue. This is because for any industry to thrive or grow, certainly it must have some level of independence in its operations, and that is sincerely what is lacking in the system in Nigeria and that was what push not only NULGE but trade unions that exist in the local government in Nigeria to be canvassing for a constitutional reform that would give this system of government more teeth to bite and also more leverage to the maximum it can achieve.

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President, the election of a new government is already here, you began this process early with the Eight Assembly and recently, we have not be hearing from you. How will you capture the whole process?

You are aware of how much this union is putting in terms of logistics and everything that we have as a union in order to ensure that we achieve this important aspect of our survival as a system. But we have been having a lot of obstacles and stumbling block on our way, which is normal in any political struggle because there are many players with diverse interests as how local governments should operate. But we strongly believe that ours is for the good of the country, for the good of the common people because if you look at the entirety of what we are agitating for, there is nothing that has direct link with the welfare of local government workers or salaries. We are looking at how this tiers of government can deliver on the mandate it was created for and that we are saying this because we know our local governments have being dilapidated due to the level of encroachment  they suffered over the years and which they are still suffering and we as union from experience decided that a lot need to be done because when you are in a political dispensation as a trade union and you still believe that your  struggles, your approach your strategies should be the same, the strategies you used during military era, certainly you will have a lot of setbacks in succeeding whatever you plan for your organization. May be, that is the area you people are coming from that for sometimes you people have not been hearing from us and hearing from us if I understand you properly you have not been seeing us on the streets again; I want to assure you that we are not silent we are still doing a lot of work considering the fact that this is a political era and we believe that we must try to make this issue a strong point, a campaign point and a strong issue that every contestant to any elective position can look at clearly and maybe used as a campaign instrument. If you go to most of the states, because most of the challenges we were having is from the state government; we were able to engage a lot of contestants from different political parties and in most cases, some of the candidates for the position of governors of various state have made strong commitment on how local government should be made to work based on our position. This is a strategy we believe must change at least  for now to ensure that at this time there is the need for politicians to include the issue in their manifestos. We forwarded these issues to them and they included them on their manifestos and their campaign promises. We achieved a lot in that regard. I assure you, we believe that at the end of these elections and by May 29th when the new administrations take over across the country, a lot of changes are going to happen, particularly on the issue of local government.

Does that means all the process and efforts made during this Eight Assembly that almost resulted in a success story achieved nothing?

I think this is not the first time; we reached the same level before. I know under the Seventh Assembly, similar action was taking and there was consensus by the two chambers of the National Assembly, on how to free local government by ensuring that constitutional amendment are achieved and the bill was sent to state Assemblies as in the case today. But unfortunately, the experience is the same. That was why I started responding to your question by telling you that from experience, we believe that we need to change our approach from the normal trade union style during the military era by being on the streets all the time to may be engaging politicians during their campaign. That we put so much hope on, and I can assure you that we engaged all the candidates at various levels.

You said you faced serious obstacles, and we know that most of this came from the state levels, especially from the state assemblies and governors. What measures did you take along this line?

At the local government level the candidates aspiring to be members of the state assemblies were engaged by our local and state chapters and also those contesting to be governors were also engaged. We had series of meetings with all of them; even at the national level here we had series of consultations with various stakeholders and political parties and we tried to push it as a campaign issue and extracted a lot of commitment from various candidates. I want to assure you, this strategy is very important considering the fact that this is a democratic dispensation, and in democracy dialogue and consultations are very important instruments in pushing your issues. Even in the past, you cannot say that our efforts didn’t yield any fruit. It actually yielded a lot of results; even the awareness created within the country is something else. Before our engagement with authorities and stakeholders, the issue of local government was not clear to Nigerians. Where the problem lies, nobody knew it. It was through our struggle and the way we exposed those that are behind the malfunctions of the local government system, that the issue came to the limelight and it afford the opportunity for Nigerians to come to reality with what is happening. That awareness alone is a success which I believe now that our union and other stakeholders in the local government are on the same page with almost all Nigerians. They believed before  that local government is not functioning because the operators of local government are bad or because of the incapacity of the operators of the local government. But now, Nigerians know that it is merely because of the encroachment of the governors. That is what made the local government impotent to the extent that the system is dying. The system is sinking, and the system is completely missing in the state of things.