National President of Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), Comrade Ibrahim Khaleel, has challenged members of the union to advance the campaign for local government autonomy beyond the on-going zonal rallies across the country.
Khaleel, who was addressing the rally for the South-east zone in Enugu, recently, said the burden of creating awareness for freedom of the local government lay with NULGE members.
The union leader disclosed that the campaign was the only option left for NULGE members because the elite at various levels of government had bastardised the noble development ideas behind making the local government system the third tier of government.
He said, “We therefore ask each and every one of you here to take this campaign beyond these cities of our national rallies to every local government headquarters, towns and villages and to the individual levels so that it becomes the collective cause of every Nigerian citizen.
“This campaign, for us, remains one of the most viable options left for us to draw attention to what we can correctly describe as the re-colonisation of our people.
“Being the nucleus upon which the entire national political edifice of our dear country rests, we as workers in the local government system will be abdicating in our responsibilities if we’re not in the frontline of the struggle to extricate our nation from the exploitation and vice grip of our political elite.”
Speaking further, he said: “We need not restate the fact that as employees in the local government system, we remain the most dependable voice from which Nigerians will measure the true situation of governance at the local government level.
“The burden of creating awareness therefore lies on our shoulders to serve as the vanguard of the advocacy for local government autonomy”.
