Ogbeh urges federal government to end joint accounts.
He said the federal government should pay funds directly to councils.
Audu Ogbeh, former minister of agriculture, says state governors who establish caretaker committees for LG administrations should not receive funds because it is ‘illegal.’
He spoke when he featured on ‘Inside Sources’, a programme on Channels Television, on Friday.
Ogbeh asked the federal government to discontinue the payment of LG funds to joint accounts.
LG funds are paid into a joint account operated by state governments and local governments in their domains.
The former minister asked the government to move it funds to accounts solely operated by LG administrations.
“Any governor who sets up a caretaker committee should not receive any funds because a caretaker is illegal, by the Supreme Court. 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.”
Ogbeh accused some governors of misusing local government funds by appointing loyalists to caretaker positions and diverting resources for personal gain.
There has been a growing demand in Nigeria for greater independence and self-governance at the local level.
On May 26, the federal government filed a suit at the supreme court against governors of the 36 states — seeks full autonomy for the country’s 774 local governments.
Ogbeh asked the President and state governors to confer and determine the fate of local governments, adding that functional LG would effectively alleviate numerous social and environmental issues plaguing the nation.
“Here you have a system which unfortunately is not working. If it were working, a lot of these problems would not be there. You have a governor in the state and there are 10, 15 local governments, and the local government is failing.
He said local governments should be treated as collaborative entities for comprehensive development, adding that if governors fail to empower them to provide essential services like clean water, healthcare, and education, the system should be abolished altogether.
“What I want to say to Nigerians, if we don’t want the local government system, scrap it, if it were allowed to work, it would have been a fantastic system.”
The minister said that governors are fueling grassroots discontent by unilaterally removing democratically elected local leaders and replacing them with handpicked caretakers, thereby sowing seeds of resentment and frustration.
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