Written by ....
Tuesday, 17 July 2007

In this interview with Daily Trust’s Hir Joseph in Makurdi, the special adviser spoke on this and other issues. Excerpts:

You have been in office as governor’s special adviser on Local governments and chieftaincy affairs for two weeks now. So far what would you say are the challenges?

Very enormous, you have to first familiarise with the department as in this case the bureau. You have to get to know the people you are working with. Mind you, they are human beings who come from different back-grounds. You have to be able to get them to also under-stand your own perspective of development and so on. I also come from the local government as a former chairman and it is not entirely a new terrain. We have always had cause to come here for our monthly alloca-tion meeting and so I have met with most of the people in the bureau and have developed informal relation-ship with them. It is quite a challenge.

The new administration is talking of restructuring which will bring a reform and a new orientation to governance. To what extent is this policy reflecting on the local government system in the state?

Well, restructuring in this sense is fundamental. We have a vision and aspirations; we have a master document as you know. We call it "Our Benue, Our Future". It encapsulates reforms at every level of the life of this government. We want to make sure that we put square pegs into square holes. We want to also reposition the local government system as it is today for service delivery; and in the course of doing this, you know, the reform must be fundamental. The way people used to do things and the way people used to think, there has to be training and retraining. There has to be a fresh orientation to get people to understand that they must conform to the best practices in government business.

The governor identified the local government councils as a fountain of corruption. What is he doing to check the trend?

Well, corruption as you know has eaten deep into the fibre of the society here. We do not want to make a blanket statement concerning it because as much as you have people who are corrupt in the local government system, you still have some people who are almost saints in the same system. But we set our dragnet and we are sure that the net will be able to fish the corrupt ones out. And once we get them, we will throw them out so that the system can work, get it to work and get people to survive. We are not going to tolerate indis-cipline within this system. This tier of government is the closest to the people; it must impact on them positively. There is an image problem about the local government system. They must gradually try and erode that. People must have confidence in the system for them to cooperate. For us to generate revenue internally, the tax payers must be sure that when they pay the taxes, the resources are not going to be frittered away. To that extent, we will discourage sleaze at very high level, you know, starting from up to down. And the man, who is in the driver’s seat, the governor of the state, is very serious about this matter and is prepared not to spare anybody. So we believe that we will get there.

What is responsible for the ongoing crises over the appointment of the caretaker committees for the local government areas?

Like in all political adven-tures, there must be cries because there are positions where you have a lot of people aspiring to occupy. And so there are choices, and we have asked the communities because we believe in broad consultation system. We have asked the communities where those people have come from. Our party is to go back and nominate people for selec-tion. The emerging lists are not binding on us, when they come, we look at the list, we look at the qualifications, and we look at the antecedents. If you are a security risk, if you have been found to be corrupt in the past, you are never going to make that list.

What then is your reaction over the develop-ment which almost turned into a fracas between some members of the state House of Assembly and some persons chosen for appoint-ment? I am talking of Kwande local government.

Well, I am not aware that we had a fracas situation. But I believe that the struggle for political position should not be reduced to a level that we become members of the animal kingdom. We should go about it in a civilized way and with some level of decorum and decency.

The timetable for next local government election is not out yet, but would you give me an insight into how far the government has gone in preparing for this exercise?

The government wants the election to hold as soon as possible but, you know, the state electoral commi-ssion must be able to provide us with a data that we will need to conduct the election and here I am talking about the voters’ register. Without the voters’ register, we cannot plan for the election. In the state here, our own electoral body, the BSIEC, is in place and I also think that we can quickly put in a supplementary budget for the purpose of conducting election when the need arises. But as a state that is swelled by PDP at the level of stakeholders and caucus, the issue of timetable will be discussed. Every state is allowed to have its own timetable, but for the purpose of harmony and cohesion, I think, it will serve us best if we have the election, at least in the PDP states, running at the same time so that we can plan together.

When the governor asked the most senior civil servants in the 23 local government areas to take over the administration of the councils, he confirmed that almost all councils are heavily indebted. But he insisted on investigation to ascertain the veracity of the debt claims before he will order for the settlements. How far has the government gone on this undertaking?

Well, indebtedness of the local government is not necessarily an allegation of corruption. We have been having a decline in allocation and all that. And this has occasioned some of the debts that have been incurred by the councils. I believe that by the time the whole data comes to our bureau here, we should be able to go out and investigate and authenticate the claims that had been made by these respective directors at the local government level. Mind you, they are not permanent heads in the local government. With the appo-intment of the caretaker committees now, they cease to function as the heads of the councils. And we also feel that we must also be able to bring in technical people, professionals, consultants who will look at our books, you know, to be able to give us authentic result about what the status of this debt profiles are. When we do that, we will make a final statement on it.

Any plan to seek legislation to back the ongoing reforms especially at the local government level?

Most of the reforms that we are going to embark on are already embedded in the system. All that is needed is to do the holistic implemen-tation of the procedure. For instance, you have an inspectorate division, depart-ment in the Bureau here. We need to strengthen it to perform its function and we also have inspectors who are resident in the local govern-ment area. If we empower them to do that job, most of those things would have been addressed. I believe also that we would not do anything that is unconstitu-tional. For whatever we want to do, we must look at it, get the ministry of justice to look at what we are doing and then once it is vetted, we can go ahead and begin to implement. But I promise that the governor of the state who incidentally is a lawyer by training will not pursue any agenda that is uncon-stitutional.

It is not clear as to whether the Deputy Governor, Chief Steven Lawani, now has what was before now the ministry of local governments under his office. But at the moment, he seems to be managing the affairs of the local councils. Can you make clarifications on this?

Well, the Bureau for local governments and chieftaincy affairs is under the office of the governor. The deputy governor is also a governor; once the governor is not on seat, he becomes the governor of the state and he is to also carry out functions as may be delegated to him by the governor. So, at any point in time the governor can request that the deputy governor should carry out any official function. I think what he is doing is within the context; it’s not outside the principles of government.

The newly appointed caretaker committees are expected to be in office for only a short time. What will be their goals?

Well, we expect every appointee of this government to share and execute the vision and aspirations of the government. We cannot think outside "Our Benue, Our Future" document. It is the focus on which this government is going to move. For us, it is a real track, you know, until we have a better alternative, we are going to move straight on that track, to make sure we achieve our objectives. Our administration has evolved an agenda for the development of the state. In the implementation of the blueprint, the governor said, we will be guided by the philosophy of selfless service to the people and judicious management of resources to achieve greater results.