By Olasunkanmi Akoni

The Executive Chairman of Bariga, Local Council Development Areas, LCDA,  Kolade Alabi, has said that the council is targeting at least N1 trillion to finance the regeneration projects of the area into smart city in the next three years.

Alabi, who is also the Chairman of Conference 57, an umbrella body of all the chairmen in the 20 Local Government Areas, LGAs and 37 Local Council Development Areas, LCDA, in Lagos State.

Alabi is also the President of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON).

The council boss who disclosed this while briefing newsmen on activities and future plans of the council at the Secretariat, added that his administration will deployed local methodology to curb insecurity in the council, saying security is local, hence, the need to adopt local methodology in securing the communities in the council.

According to him: “To make Bariga smart city, is our plan and that does not mean we are not going to do other things, you know Bariga water level is high,just last week we have listed above 31 roads to be touched and we try to deliver the 31 roads in this Administration.

“We are also looking into the area of primary school, we have 30 primary schools in Bariga and we want to start by addressing it one by one.

“What we are building now is two schools, that means we have touched two schools out of 30, remaining 28 and also we are going to move to Ajidagbon by building another five schools, making seven. It means we have touching seven schools out of 30 and before the end of our administration we want to touched nothing less than 15 schools that would be ungraded.

“In the next two, three years, expect a lot of developmental projects in Bariga. We are moving to a smart city our health center we also be touched all our primary health centers will be ungraded to standard health centers.

“We will be using the Public Private Partnership ,PPP model to execute these massive projects in the area of regeneration into smart city.

“We are involving PPP because this needed alot of money and we have give a consultant in this regard it going to cost nothing less than N1trillion, so where do we get the money from, we are going to involve PPP arrangement and we have engaged an outfit, the award winning contract we have really gone far and by God’s willing, by next year, we shall commence work in earnest.

“We have engaged different stakeholders, we also engaged the land owners who are willing to invest their property in the scheme. We have a good plan that we make a land owners to benefit more.

“For instance,  popular king Sunny Ade is the brand Ambassador of this project and he has also given his land at Ilaje to kick start this regeneration plans.  In the next one year, I think we should start this regeneration projects of Bariga.”

Speaking on security, Alabi stressed: “state policing will aid the involvement of local authorities in solving security challenges.

“What we did was that we engaged our youths in many frame. We provided employment for them and we give them that space to thrive. There’s a disconnect between government and youths so what we’ve done is to breach that gap and we engaged them in all our daily activities so that they will be well informed and they will not engage in criminal activities.

“All problems, all security challenges, all student problems, youths problems are local and it is only the local authority that can solve this problems”

On Federal allocation and sharing formula, Alabi described the present arrangement of local government allocation through the state government as obsolete and called for immediate review of the law.

His words: “To me, it’s obsolete, it’s outdated and should be reviewed and of course I thank the federal government that they are now doing sensitization and building a program and of course have involved all local authorities and state governments in saying this allocation sharing program should be reviewed.

“We ( councils) need more money at the local government level and that was why in the recent times I have advocated that there should be a review of the allocation sharing formula for us (councils).