TVC E. Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday 22nd of June, lamented the alleged poor treatment of 774 local government areas in the country.
LGAs have been rendered “impotent” and almost “bastardised” following the massive interference into their affairs by state governors “I wish I could help, but I am helpless.” He said.
Obasanjo stressed that the “glaring injustice and overbearing influence of the governors on the LGAs are such that they cannot tolerate if treated the same way by the Federal Government elect.
The ex-president spoke when a 60-member delegation of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) visited him at his home on the Presidential Hilltop Estate, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
The delegation, led by the NULGE National President, Ibraheem Khaleel, came to Obasanjo’s home to solicit for his support towards freeing the LGAs from the alleged “asphyxiating grip of the nation’s 36 state governors”.
The NULGE President said the union had come to Obasanjo to join in the rescue mission of the LGA system, noting that as founding member of the administration in 1976, they had autonomy of the third tier in mind.
Obasanjo who listened to them, said he was helpless about their plights. He noted that when the LGAs were reformed in 1976, by the then military government, which he was a part, it gave LGAs” functions, responsibilities and duties” to perform.
He said it is saddening now to observe that state governors’ interference has completely eroded the “sanctity and constitutionality” of the law establishing LGAs.
He said: “coming to me or me saying something is not the answer. I’m like a cripple. I have no executive power. I have no legislative power, but you are not crippled and you can show them that you are on ground.
Local Government should be allowed to carry out its function. But I wonder, if the states can allow what they are doing to the Local Governments to be done to them by the Federal Government.
Sadly, very very sadly, the autonomy of the Local Governments almost without any exception, have been bastardized and encroached by the states.
Both are suppose to be tiers of government with each having its roles and functions. But, that is not the case.
We shall continue to talk until those who are reasonable among them change this attitude.”
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