Ex-minister urges Supreme Court to revisit verdict on local govt financial autonomy
Former Labour and Employment Minister in the Muhammadu Buhari administration, Senator Chris Ngige, has said some local government chairmen are more corrupt than governors.
He said some local government chairmen crave the acquisition of choice estates in Abuja, Lagos, and even abroad, at the detriment of building public health centres and schools in their areas, where teachers are owed several months of salary arrears and allowances.
The former minister decried the abandonment of more than 15,000 primary healthcare centres built across the country as constituency projects, urging the State Economic Planning Boards to ensure that the abandoned healthcare centres were revamped as quickly as possible.
He maintained that the local government system remained pivotal to basic healthcare system, which former Minister of Health, Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, transformed into primary healthcare system.
Ngige also urged the Supreme Court to revisit its judgment on local government financial autonomy.
The ex-minister said the verdict violated the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
He argued that the judgment attempted to completely knock down Section 7 of the Constitution, which firmly puts the local government areas under the control of states.
Ngige spoke at the weekend in Enugu on the topic: Local Government Administration and Primary Healthcare, during the 29th annual general meeting (AGM) and scientific conference of the Association of Urological Surgeons, Nigeria (NAUS).
The former minister recalled that the same Supreme Court, in 2006, made a pronouncement in which it warned the Federal Government against dictating to the states how to spend local government funds accruable to them.
He recalled that the previous Supreme Court ruling when Justice Mohammed Uwais was the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) was pronounced in a case filed by three state governments – Lagos, Abia, and Delta – through their attorneys general, challenging then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Local Government Account Monitoring Committee Act 2005.
Ngige said he did not support the direct payment of federal allocation to the local governments without statutory first-line deductions for the payment of salaries and wages of council workers, pensions and gratuities, traditional rulers’ entitlements and customary courts’ allowances.
According to him, the judgment of the Supreme Court not only runs ultra vires of the Constitution but amounts to throwing away the baby with the dirty bath water.
The former minister blamed the failure of the local government system in Nigeria on the docility of the Houses of Assembly and the flagrant inability of the governors to adhere strictly to all the provisions of the Constitution on local government, especially the failure to establish democratically elected councils and economic planning board, as stipulated in Section 7 (1) and (3) of the Constitution.
He also attributed the failure of the local government system to the unwholesome activities of governors with itchy fingers, seizing and diverting council funds to other uses, other than public interests.
Ngige insisted that the local government system would start working when governors obey the law and the Houses of Assembly become alive to their responsibilities, including calling erring governors to order.
Citing his experience when he was Anambra State governor, he recalled that council chairmen between 1999 and 2002 owed several months of salaries and allowances, and pensions and gratuities, not only in the state but almost across the federation.
By Damola Kola-Dare
