…. says Bayelsa with 8 councils is being shortchanged

…states should be allowed to create councils

By Samuel Oyadongha, Yenagoa

President of the Ijaw National Congress, INC Professor Benjamin Okaba has lauded the Supreme Court ruling that granted fiscal autonomy to the 774 Local Government Areas in the country.

He, however, lamented what he described as the further marginalization of Bayelsa State with only eight local government areas which falls short of the mandatory ten councils for a state as prescribed in the country’s constitution. 

Okaba in an interview with Vanguard in Yenagoa said though the ruling was anticipated to trigger substantial development at the grassroots level, “the present system is skewed in favour of states with more local government areas.”

His words, “Granting financial autonomy to the councils is a welcome development because we have heard cases where councils are being stifled of cash which is not good enough for the system.

“Fiscal autonomy alone is not enough; they should also be granted administrative autonomy so that men of integrity can be in charge of the councils for the people to enjoy sustainable development at the grassroots which is the hallmark of democracy.”

According to Okaba, “The councils can receive direct allocations, work on their budgets, carry out basic functions such as education, healthcare services, sanitary inspection, revenue collection, and building of markets as well as construct some degree of roads according to their resources.

“If that is done across the 774 councils in the country the impact of governance would be felt at the grassroots.

“But for us as Ijaw people, we have a more fundamental problem which is the manner in which Local Government Areas were created.

“For instance, Bayelsa has only 8 LGAs and Kano has 44 LGAs, so if you are going to fund the councils directly and each council is getting N5m it means Bayelsa will get N40m while Kano receives N220m. You can see the disparity and that for us particularly from the oil producing sector see it as another way of extricating us from the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.

“There must be some kind of balancing, people have been working out several strategies but for me what they should do is that since going by the Nigerian constitution the councils are not federating units but the states, let the amount of money meant for all the councils be divided according to the states. If N10bn is given to each state and you have five local governments manage it, if you have 40 manage it.

“Because we are gravitating to a point where we are already seeking that state governments should be given the responsibility of creating the number of local government areas they want.

“What we have is playing on the sensibility of the people in places like Bayelsa and some other states with fewer local governments which is not their fault. This disparity should be taken care of for the sake of justice and fairness.”