Will LGAs Remain Muffled Under Gov Oborevwori Administration?

Issues on poor service delivery by local governments in Delta State

By Godwin-Maria Utuedoye

As another local government election approaches in Delta State, it is imperative to ask if Governor Sherriff Oborevwori will sustain the culture of imposition of council chairmen and councilors or allow the people decide who leads them.

This question is pertinent as over the years, successive administrations since return to democracy in 1999, have reduced the Local Government (LG), critical third tier of government, to a mere patronage tool of the governor in power.

Citizens are no longer allowed to vote their choice candidates during LG elections as only the governors select and impose their lackeys and loyalists on the people, making the council elections sheer waste of the state commonwealth as actual votes cast don’t count.

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Governors have rather reduced this government structure to an appendage of state governments. A governor in power solely dictate, decide and give what they feels is enough to empower his cronies at the detriments of the populace, the development and growth of the people.

In the demonstration of this impunity, governors are known to have defiled the constitution is denying the people council elections as and when due, feasting on LG revenues through proxies they call caretakers against the statutory provision of holding LG elections every three years.

For instances, recently, Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State inaugurated caretakers in the place of elected LG chairmen and councilors in his state. This is, no doubt, done in a very bad and exploitative fate.

The state electoral bodies have all become rubber stamp involving sycophants compassionately engaged by sitting governors to write and declare predetermined elections results as he who pays the piper dictates the tone.

Often, materials for elections are either not distributed or hijacked by the ruling party in order to disenfranchise both electorates and opposition political parties from participating in such elections. It has become a norm by successive regimes or administrations to win it all.

The governors will carefully select their loyalists either within their own political party, among their relatives or children of their godfathers, associates, confraternity members or hangers on to fill the contested offices.

Section 14 (c) of the 1999 constitution provides that “the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.”

Though the Supreme Court has, in so many cases, frowned at and declared caretaker committees appointed by some governors to be unconstitutional, the practice continues unabated and disappointingly, some states have not witnessed local government elections in so many years. More recently is that of the Bayelsa State.

In most cases, the governor is the all in all as he can decide when to hold LG elections and in course of the delay decide how he uses the monthly allocation accrued to the councils. Under the circumstance, LGs are starved of funds thereby leading to under development of the grassroots.

They believe no one has the power to challenge their impunity and even when challenged, it will take years before the matter gets to the Supreme Court from which decision there is no further right of appeal.

Critically, the quality of persons imposed as LG chairmen by state governors is total mockery of modern governance. Some governors would rather appoint touts and thugs to become councillors and LG chairmen in order to be worshipped as gods by these unworthy beneficiaries.

It is such a dangerous precedence to impose LG leaders whose intelligence quotient cannot even administer a mere household, yet they are lorded over the people to enjoy double tenures in return for sustained loyalty to their governors with the sole responsibility to mobilise set funds in carrying out only activities that glorify the paymaster, the governor and settle. Their own pockets to the detriment of the common good.

This has no doubt destroyed the entire LG administration system whereby only their (governors) choice persons are enriched at the detriments of others, infrastructures and development of the local government.

In 2021, despite the outcry and condemnation on the choice of persons hand picked and selected by immediate past Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, he went ahead to impose his cronies and loyalists, most of whom had nothing to show for the past three years of holding sway.

Little wonder they are coerced to sign for a contradicting sum from what is originally accrued to each local government from the monthly federal allocations that comes in millions. They are rather given a meagre sum for payments of local government staff and primary school teachers salaries, and allow their stooge planted to go with the rest unquestioned and unaccounted.

The constitution made it clear that the LG system should be an independent structure as regards being democratically elected in its councils. Accordingly, the Constitution mandates the government of every state, subject to Section 8 of the Constitution, to ensure the existence of the LG elected under a law, which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils.

Deltans have suffered a lot. They have been treated with disdain. LG chairmen are no longer accountable to the people they claimed to be governing. There is the need for a change from the monopolistic attitude of the governors.

A survey across all 25 local government areas of the state clearly showed that LGs have been so reduced to mere appendages of the state government. Aside payment of monthly salaries, sometimes delayed, the chairmen don’t embarked on any tangible development project that will impact the citizens or residents.

Blocked drains are not cleared. Roads, streets are bad. Flood everywhere, people lamenting one challenge or the other. It is about time we deviated from the attitude of filtering what belongs to LGs. Canals can be cleared by LG. Streets can be bulldozed by LGs and failed spots on the roads amended.

All the concerns raised continue to fall into deaf ears under excuses of poor allocations, yet they acquire private properties and amass wealth for selves. The question remains, if the Oborevwori administration is going to sustain the culture of strangulating LGs from functioning independently.