The Civil Rights Realisation and Advancement Network (CRRAN), has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to urgently intervene in the alleged diversion of Local Government funds by some State Chief Executives to save Nigeria’s democracy.
The group made the call in a statement entitled: “Urgent appeal to save democracy and the masses at the grassroots” signed by it’s President, Olu Omotayo Esq, and made available to Journalists in Enugu.
According to Omotayo, the continued diversion of local government allocations by state governors was rubbing the people at the grassroots of quality living.
He sighted the recent revelations by the Chairman of Ijebu East Local Government Council of Ogun State, Wale Adedayo, in a letter he addressed to a former governor of the state and a leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Olusegun Osoba and made public alleging the diversion of LG allocations.
According to the group: “It is unfortunate that the continuous looting of local government funds continued unchecked even under this new administration thereby resulting in little or no development at the grassroots as majority of the masses have continued to live in abject poverty.
“Mr. Wale Adedayo is not saying anything new but only re echoing the extent to which most state governors have continued to impoverish the citizens, ” the group said.
Omotayo further recalled that the immediate past President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari once stated in 2022, after delivering his speech at an event hosted for members of the Senior Executive Course 44 (2022) of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) that: “it beats anyone’s imagination how some state governors would collect money on behalf of council areas in their states, only to remit just half of such allocation to the council chairman, who would further deplete the remittance in further pilfering of public resources”.
According to him, the former president further stated that from his experience: “If the monies from the federal government to state governments is N100 million let’s put it at N100 million, N50 million will be sent to the chairman with a letter that he will sign what he received N100 million”.
The rights group said the aforementioned assertions from the person of former president of Nigeria was enough to suggest that the Chairman of Ijebu East Local Government, might not be wrong after all.
“It is submitted that the illegality and massive fraud at the local government level across the country have consistently kept the citizens at the grassroots and the masses in the cocoon of abject poverty and denied the people the dividends of democracy due to the fact that local government councils are the nearest tier of government to the people.
“There has never been transparency and accountability in the running of the affairs of the local government councils in Nigeria despite the bold step taken by the Federal government intervention through the Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), that started on June 1, 2019, and enabled allocations to local governments in the country to be made directly to each local government account, ” CRRAN said.
The group appealed for Federal Government’s intervention “to ensure the immediate release of Wale Adedayo, from the unlawful detention.”
