Audu Ogbeh: Many of Nigeria’s problems would have been solved if LGAs were working

Audu Ogbeh, a former minister of agriculture, says state governors who establish caretaker committees for LGAs should not receive allocations meant for the third tier of government.

Speaking on Inside Sources, a programme on Channels Television anchored by Laolu Akande, on Friday, Ogbeh said setting up 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.”

Ogbeh also alleged that some governors are misusing LGA funds by appointing loyalists to caretaker positions and diverting resources for personal gain.

The former minister said a 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,” 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 suit at the supreme court against state governors to seek full autonomy for the country’s 774 LGAs.