Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Niger Delta Affairs, Ita Enang, says governors frustrate the president’s efforts in tackling insecurity by spending funds that should be allocated to their local governments.
Enang said this on Monday while speaking on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).
“The governors have exercised so much powers that are beyond what the constitution envisaged for them. The president has kept within his powers as president and does not interfere with the funds of the state governments. The governors have interfered and kidnapped the funds of the local governments through what is called the state/local government joint account,” he said.
“They don’t even give to the local governments the monies that they realise as internally generated revenue, which is why the joint account was made — internally generated revenue plus the statutory allocation, you add it and distribute to the local governments.
“Now, the insecurity problem we have today, the governors cannot escape the criticism of the people because everybody is a witness. If the governors allow the monies of the local governments to get to the local governments, the local governments would have been able to at least capture within their net, certain persons of certain class at that local government level. They will be seen as a tier of government.
“If the governors had given the monies meant for local governments, there would be agriculture at that level; there would be some intervention in infrastructure at that level; there would be governance at that level. What happens today is that chairmen of local governments and local government officers only go to work when there is allocation.
“If governors would take the monies of local governments, and when they face insecurity, they say ‘President Buhari’. Then President Buhari will be applying the federal government allocation to fund the armed forces. The security agencies going to every spot to intervene.
“Meanwhile, each of these spots belongs to a local government, or a state, and the states will believe that they can deal with local governments the way they are dealing with them, and then have peace? You cannot have peace.”
