A former Nigeria’s minister of agriculture, Audu Ogbeh says every state governor that establish caretaker committees for LGAs should not receive allocations that is meant for the third tier of government.
Ogbeh, whilst speaking on Inside Sources, a programme on Channels Television anchored by Laolu Akande, on Friday, said installing caretaker committees for LGAs is “illegal”.
“Any governor who sets up a caretaker committee should not receive any funds because a caretaker is illegal, supreme court said. Don’t send them cash, deduct their own and keep it,” Ogbeh said.
“I can’t be sending you money that disappears. You don’t repair primary schools, you don’t do anything, the money vanishes, and they say they are paying workers. For which work?
“Strolling around in the morning and drinking palm wine? These are the issues. Those failures are creating dangerous problems for the country.”
The ex-minister also made accusations that some governors are misusing LGA funds by appointing the people loyal to them to caretaker positions and diverting resources for personal gain.
Ogbeh added that a functional LG would effectively mitigate numerous social and environmental issues bedeviling the country.
“Here you have a system which unfortunately, is not working. If it were working, a lot of these problems would not be there,” he said.
“You have a governor in the state and there are 10 and 15 local governments, and the local government is failing.
“What I want to say to Nigerians is that if we don’t want the local government system, scrap it; if it were allowed to work, it would have been a fantastic system.”
On May 26, the federal government filed a lawsuit at the supreme court against state governors to demand absolute autonomy for Nigeria’s 774 LGAs.