The founder, Matagu Foundation, an anti corruption advocacy group, Chief Ekene Enefe, has bemoaned the non-conduct of local government elections in most states in the South East region and urged probe of funds accruing to council areas in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states.
Enefe, while addressing newsmen in Awka, the Anambra state capital, on Monday, said his call became necessary following the continuous appointment and use of Transition Committee (TC) members to run affairs of third tiers of government by most governors in the region.
Enefe said continued use of transition committees to run the councils when constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria provided that elections should be conducted into the various tiers of government so that they could have autonomy was grossly .
According to him, even in states where elections were conducted into the councils, they were for formality purposes as the chairmen were denied every executive powers which their election should confer on them.
“In line with the ongoing probe of some institutions in the country, Matagu Foundation is calling on the federal government to probe the corruption in the local government system especially in the South East where governors have refused to allow the councils to function constitutionally. Federal government ensures that elections are conducted into states but the governors refuse to allow that at the council level, this is mainly because they see local government money as free and sweet money.
“There is no local government that earns less than N150 million a month yet there is no sign infrastructure development in the communities, it is so bad that councils cannot patch bad road talkless of building new ones, they can’t undertake any development project. So, we would have these governors and their transition committee cohorts to explain to the citizens what they have used these allocations and internal revenues for,” he added.
He urged the federal government to stop disbursing allocations to councils in states where elections had not been conducted, even as he alleged that “Some state governors collect these monies in cash, some of them have been fined by CBN and they have paid, we would be willing to tender evidence that will assist the probe”.
