It is noteworthy that since the assumption of office of the Kogi state Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Barrister Momodu Salami Ozigi, the state has recorded positive changes in the area of local government administration and the chieftaincy sector.
On assumption of office, the commissioner immediately got down to work because he knows what he wants done and so he can be regarded as a square peg in a square hole. He has redefined the broad principles of governance after consultations with all relevant stakeholders at the local level in Kogi state. This has helped the public to know where the local governments are supposed to be in the lives of the people.
As part of the foundational work needed, the young and ebullient Ozigi has already defined the perspectives and measures of the job the ministry need to urgently undertake to create a modern local government administration in Kogi state that can re-engineer the development of people at the grassroots.
The commissioner met with all the critical stakeholders including the local governments and the chieftaincy holders themselves and that gave him the perspective in highlighting the problems in these areas and in the process highlight and introduce new measures to help in solving identified problems and critically developing a systematic and pragmatic system of implementing the solutions. This is significantly a radical departure from the old ways of solving problems identified by administrators, to a new way of both the government and the people, identifying critical problems and finding solutions and implementing it together. This method has been applauded by all.
The commissioner has, at this short time of his assumption of office, shown that he is a reformist administrator. In order for his ministry to surmount the herculean responsibilities it has in making the local governments as a third tier of government and bring development to the grassroots, he has reformed the departments and units under his ministry
He has always reiterated that the local governments were created to bring development closer to the people at the grassroots and his reformative acts as commissioner are to accelerate developments at the grassroots and to allow the local population in Kogi state to participate and in the process hold those that are in leadership role at that tier of government accountable.
He is working towards a Kogi state where a true third tier is allowed to take off in the state. Governor Yahaya Bello, a true believer in the third tier of government and its potential of making life purposeful for the people in the grassroots, must be commended for his vision of picking Salami Ozigi, a lawyer and reformist, as the man to lead the state’s local government and chieftaincy affairs ministry.
In reforming the local government system in Kogi state, the commissioner has made it known that it is not going to be business as usual. Though, as a respecter of all known constitutional provisions, he is not in any way taking away the power of the executive and legislative arms of the local governments, but rather putting in place measures that would make it work in the state without usurping their powers.
As local governments have been widely described as government closer to the people from the standpoint of administrative convenience, the commissioner in his short time in office now has a better grasps of the limitation and the changes needed to be done to make it work for the people. His take off impact in the ministry has so far been wonderful. He is indeed successful so far in the eyes of the people because he knows the philosophical rationale behind the local government system and the system needs a government that would allow the rationale behind the creation of the local governments to fester and develop. Kogites we got the man, Ozigi, and it is good for the development of the grassroots.
Salami Ozigi has succeeded in his short time yet as commissioner because he has put up the following justification forward for the emergence and incorporation of the Kogi local government model into statescraft and copied by other states. Such incorporations include
providing the rural people a platform for conducting their affairs in the context of their social, cultural and economic peculiarities, this is acknowledged as happening now in Kogi state;
providing a framework for grassroots mobilisation and the sustenance of public will and incentive for development.
Today, in Kogi state1the local government model functions as a two ways channel of communication between the grassroots and the central authorities, thereby aggregating local views and transmitting to the central authorities, while at the same keeping the local authorities abreast with the activities, programmes and development of the central authorities.
Abdulmajeed writes from Abuja
