OSUN AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY

ZUBAIR OPEYEMI argues the need for an independent body to conduct local government elections across the country

If Nigeria hopes for pervasive and diffusive grassroots development where policies and programmes of government as well as dividends of democracy will reach everyone, the local government system has to be in order.

The present system whereby the governor of each state is a pseudo-local government chairman which they run by proxy is not only condemnable but reprehensive. At the Accountability Group, we believe the best gift to Nigerians by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration is to restore the dignity of the third tier of government and makes it workable.

The interest of the governors transcends any good or interest of the people as they had in the past and in various ways, shuffled the political cards and came up with schemes that will perpetually keep local government funds under their care.

Some did in the past through the Joint accounts where the governors decide what happens. It got so bad that some councilors legislated a percentage of their allocations as tax to the State.

The free funds from such local government schemes informs why every state works their state electoral commission to deliver the will of every party in power at such state or which party the governor lists. At the root of those acrobatics is still fund that will accrue directly to the local governments.

Across the nation, every governor is still maintaining the strangle-hold on the local governments, not for development or deepening democracy but what they can gain financially as politics delivers the biggest free funds in the country.

 The latest is the situation in Osun State where there is a show of desperation with trips to various courts; accusations and counter accusations of use of state power – whether phantom or real – all to score political point and secure any allocation that would be due to the third tier of government in the state.

Governor Isiaka Adeleke would not mind to weaken institutions like the courts provided he gets his heart’s desire which is to install his cronies at the third tier level.

We are tired of state governors being entitled to local governments. We are tired of them being in control of their elections. We want independent bodies to conduct local elections. We are very much aware that who pays the pipers dictates the tune. What we are witnessing in Osun State is an eyesore in our political space. President Tinubu has tried by giving us local government autonomy. But it’s not how far, it’s how well. With the local government election being controlled by state’s SIEC we are still giving more power to the governor than the constitution. We don’t want it anymore.

How can we be experiencing bloodbath in local government elections? We believe our politics has developed more than that. We want local government totally liberated from the governors. Even with the fact that majority of Nigerian governors are under-performing and yet they want to have access to the total resources of the state, among others.  Leaving the electioneering process in the hands of state governors is like giving freedom to the local government authority with the right hand and collecting it with the left hand.

Already, brickbats are flying from different angles thereby heating up the polity as could be gleaned from exchanges between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in the state and the opposition All Progressives Congress. In the process, the person of the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) is being dragged for performing his duties.

The former Caretaker Chairman of the PDP in Osun State, Dr. Akindele Adekunle, has alleged that the party had uncovered a sinister plot to use hoodlums clothed in Police uniforms to thwart the conduct of the local government election, a state Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has described as irresponsible.

Opeyemi of the Accountability Group writes from Abuja