By Oyibo Salihu
Lokoja
Immediate past secretary to the Kogi state government, Alhaji Musa Ahmadu, has called on members of the National Conference to look critically on the issue of local government abolition as the third tier of government.
Ahmadu, who made the call yesterday in Lokoja, while interacting with newsmen, said the notion to scrap or the abolition of the third tier of government, if approved, could only cause more harm than good.
He said the essence of establishing the local government administration “is to bring governance closer to the people so that development can reach all the nooks and crannies of the rural areas.”
He added that the problem of local government administration was not the system, but the people saddled with the responsibility to pilot the affairs of the councils.
He said: “When a system of government fails, it is not the system that is bad, but the managers of that system. I am not and can never support the abolishment of the local government because it would further widen the gap between the state government and the downtrodden where 80 per cent of the country’s population dwells.”
He said instead of the Nation Conference to suggest the abolition of the local government, it was better to strengthen the mode of operation to check and curtail the excesses of the people managing the councils.
Ahmadu called on the federal government to look into the dwindling allocations to the local government, saying that inadequate fund has started hampering the smooth running of the councils in the country.
“It is disheartening that today virtually all the local government councils in Nigeria cannot conveniently pay salaries of their staff, not to talk of providing projects that have direct bearing on the lives of the people at the rural areas. I am calling on the federal government to look into problems of the councils rather than abolition.”