Wogu backs Buhari, NULGE over undue control of LG by govs

THE immediate past Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu has backed the position of President Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) over what he described as undue control of local government chairmen by the state governors.

In an interview with Nigerian Tribune, Wogu stated that what President Buhari and NULGE said about the governors taking over the purse of the local government was what is exactly happening across the country.

President Buhari had indicted the governors on the issue of local government autonomy and funding, saying that many of the governors force the local government chairman to sign for N300 million but are given N100 million to work with, a position which NULGE had also highlighted and warned against.

The former minister, who is a former local government chairman in Abia State and a lawyer by profession stated that though section 7 of the constitution stipulates how to sustain the local government and its independence, there were legal and political reasons why local governments have become so dependent on the governors.

To this end, he called for reform of the electoral processes into the office of the chairman of local government, in such a way that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should be saddled with the constitutional responsibility of conducting local government elections instead of the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC).

Wogu said: “Section 7 of the constitution is all about how to sustain the local government and its independence. So, what it means is that the constitution is clear on it that the local government shall be independent. But how has it become so dependent on governors? There are political reasons, and there are legal reasons.

“On the legal reasons, if you go to Section 162  which deals with Federation Account, particularly sub-section 7 and 8, that is where the confusion is. How will the money going to local government be guaranteed that it will be getting to the local government and the establishment of State Joint Local Government Account? So, there is a lacuna in that section that has given the state government the right to do their state laws. But I am not saying that, that is the reason why somebody would come and sign off and agree on what was not given to him.”

He also blamed the electoral process at the local government level, saying that the process of electing the local government leaders was flawed.

According to Wogu, “if proper elections were done, some of them would muster the courage to challenge such practices wherever they do exist. We all come from states and we all come from local governments. What Mr President said is what is happening in most places. The reason being that the process of getting those local government chairmen elected is already flawed.”

He added: “The party would bring people they believe would be subservient and make them chairmen. How come in every state, whether it is APC or PDP or SDP or whatever party, once there is a state governor who is an incumbent, who belongs to a particular party, all the councillors elected would be from that party, all the chairmen elected would be from that party.”

“That means there are no proper elections, all they do is to install and coronate such people, and because you have been put there, your allegiance is not to the law which is the constitution but to the appointing authority, which is the governor of that particular state. So, what we need is reform in terms of elections and processes into the office of the chairman of local government.

“For now, if you make it a position to be conducted by INEC, there will be a semblance of rationality in how they come up. But again, I equally put a strong case for reformation of internal party process, how to get the right people and then re-orientation of ethics and values.

“That is a problem, you come to that tier of government, even at the state houses of assembly, you see people whose allegiance is not to the law but to the person appointing them, they will always genuflect and pander to the tables of those people who appointed them. You will never have it the way it should be.”

Going a memory lane: “When I was Vice Chairman, Acting Chairman and Chairman of Aba South Local Government, we go to the pay office and collect our local government monthly cheques, the last I collected before the interregnum of Shonekan and later General Abacha was N4 million and governor Ogbonnaya Onu then used to tell me, ‘Emeka, you drive your private car, don’t you want to buy a Peugeot’? I’d say the cost of a Peugeot then was enough for me to pay teachers salaries for a month. You can see the reasoning then, why should I use a month allocation to go and buy a 504, when I inherited one or two cars from my late parents and I bought my own as a young lawyer. So, that would tell you what we were collecting and nobody was deducting any money.”

On how the local government and state can work together for the overall development of the local communities, he said: “It is not to say that you cannot have Joint State and Local Government agreement on what to do. I will give you an example, when I was aspiring to become governor of Abia State, I propounded the theory of ‘isusu’. You can agree with the chairmen, you have 17 local governments, and none can muster up to N500 million on its own to do a project, so, I said I will apply the economic of ‘isusu’, where local governments will contribute.

“Like my local government, I ensured monthly that they had a good allocation when I was in the revenue commission and most local government in Abia, some are supposed to be getting size-able chunk every month, the records are there. So, in some local governments if you say contribute a flat rate of N50 million as a joint project with the state, what you have is 50 multiplied by 17, which is N850 million, about a billion. That is a huge sum of money, then the state would contribute. You ask the local government chairman, what is his priority, is it to build a road, then you build a road or you renovate schools.

“Next month, you go to another local government, it will take 17 months for that contribution or polling of resources to go round. That is what is called Joint Cooperative Arrangement in public administration between the state and the local government. It could still happen between the federal and state government. So at the end of the day, the chairman would say this is the project he did and the state would say, this is the project they contributed toward. That means you are not tampering with local government funds for criminal reasons, but you are agreeing with them to use it for a particular common purpose.”

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