President Bola Tinubu has restated his administration’s resolve to strengthen council areas to tackle insecurity in the country.
He said the councils, being the closest government to the people, are strategically positioned to promote human security by delivering essential services like health, education, sanitation and social welfare programmes directly to communities where they are most needed.
He made the vow at the ‘National Dialogue on Nigeria’s Security Challenges and Good Governance at the Local Government Level’, organised by the House of Representatives in Abuja.
Represented by the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Abubakar, the President said the persisting insecurity poses a serious threat to the safety and welfare of the country.
He lamented insurgency, terrorism, banditry, and other forms of criminality have inflicted untold suffering on the people and undermined the collective peace and prosperity of the country.
Tinubu said local governments were the frontline defenders against insecurity as the closest to the people and repository of intimate knowledge of their communities’ needs and challenges.
“We must confront those challenges head-on, if we are to move forward in our journey towards development,” he said.
ALSO, the government called for the scrapping of State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), accusing governors of using them to impose leaders on local councils through ‘sham’ elections.
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, who made the call at the event, pointed out that governors have latched on to the inadequacies and lacunae in some sections of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to undermine and render the third tier of government redundant.
According to him, rather than function as a tier of government, the council areas have been operating as an appendage of state governments in Nigeria.
The minister noted that due to flaws in the electoral process in the country, “what is obtained is a virtual selection and not the election of local government functionaries,” alleging that council chairmen are always imposed on the people by the governors.
He argued that the “imposed” chairman would be accountable only to the governor rather than the people, often resulting in a lack of transparency and non-involvement of the citizens.
Fagbemi also called for a robust constitutional amendment that dismantles encumbrances hindering the development of local governments and their ability to fulfil their constitutionally-recognised duties.
He said: “To achieve this, many experts have proposed that there is need for the scrapping of the state independent electoral commissions. Their functions and powers should be transferred to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) because the state independent electoral commissions remain an appendage to every incumbent governor. This is perceived as the root cause of the problem of local government administration in Nigeria.”
Fagbemi observed that the constitutional provisions on the State Joint Local Government Account (Section 162, 5-8) have placed the local councils in political bondage.
This, according to him, erodes the three elements of good governance at the local government level, which are citizens’ participation, transparency, and accountability.
