×

Media Should Focus More On Local Government Development Activity

The Managing Editor of National Daily Newspaper, Mr Kelechi Anyawu, has called on Nigerian media practitioners to beam their lights on local and state governments … Continue reading Media Should Focus More On Local Government Development Activity


vlcsnap-2014-06-05-10h36m29s25The Managing Editor of National Daily Newspaper, Mr Kelechi Anyawu, has called on Nigerian media practitioners to beam their lights on local and state governments as they are also responsible for providing social basic amenities.

“That’s an area the media should focus much on, especially the local governments” he said, noting that the “big buses people see in London is not provided by the UK government”.

“We are losing our local governments because of the way our states are controlling them.”

“I think it is very important that the media should start focusing on the grass roots and start asking questions”, he said on Sunrise Daily on Thursday.

Mr Anyawu further berated the state governors for “being in total control of what the local governments get” and added that “local governments can’t even give contracts to close pot holes and other little things they are supposed to do”.

He also called on the civil society and the general public to also ask questions on how the two tiers of government use their allocated and generated funds.

He however accused the local government councils of “misappropriation and mismanagement” of funds, noting that “what they get now is almost five or six times what they used to get in the past” when they executed laudable projects.

He argued that a shift, where the governor takes total control of the local governments and usurp their project execution obligation, has taken place asking “how many of the states have conducted local government elections; so majority of the people there are handpicked by the state governors”.

He called for the re-structuring of the local government system to ensure that they are “autonomous of the control of the state government”.

Mr Anyawu further agreed with the Co-ordinating Minister and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who had called on Nigerians to demand improved standards of living from their state governments, rather than accusing the Federal Government of insensitivity all the time.

“There seems to be an over concentration of attention on what is going on at the centre. A lot of people are more concerned about what is happening at the centre than what is happening in their locality” he said, adding that “the politics of the country, in recent times, has so much projected the centre that people have little regard for what is happening in their locality” insisting that “it should change”.

The Finance Minister had said that basic public services such as education, health and agriculture fell under the concurrent list, but wondered why citizens always blamed the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan for the failings of some state governments, who get monthly allocation larger than countries like Liberia, The Gambia and the Republic of Benin.

She went ahead to list Nigeria’s 10 highest revenue receiving states based on the federal allocations in 2013.

The states and their allocations, according to her, were Akwa Ibom, N260 billion; Rivers, N230 billion; Delta, N209 billion; Bayelsa, N173 billion; Lagos, N168 billion; Kano, N140 billion; Katsina, N103 billion; Oyo, N100 billion; Kaduna, N 97billion and Borno, N94 billion.

“So you see that our top 10 states receive more money than these countries and, therefore, you should be asking what this money is being used for.” Okonjo-Iweala said.