Ex-Plateau dep. gov. hails return of financial autonomy to LGs

Former Deputy Governor of Plateau state, Chief Jethro Akun has said that granting financial autonomy to local government councils will propel rapid development at the grassroots level.

Akun, who said this in an interview in Jos on Sunday, commended President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly for the decision to grant financial autonomy to local governments.

He said that “if local governments are allowed to operate freely, it will bring more development to the country. If you look at the past, local governments used to build single culverts and roads.

“Even today, there were some projects executed by local governments that are still functioning.”

Akun, who led Plateau state, including the present Nasarawa state delegation to the 1994/95 constitutional conference, said the conference recommended financial autonomy for local governments.

“We recommended local government allocations to be paid directly to their accounts and also made it mandatory for states to give them the 10 per cent. When we handed over our report and it was turned into the 1999 Constitution, the military then decided to do it the way they did it.

“Otherwise, if you go back to our report, the structure of the local governments is like the state, so that we can develop leaders at that level,” he said.

According to him, the third tier of government is meant to groom leaders for higher political positions and responsibilities and disagreed with the argument by some National Assembly members that the local government system lacks qualified personnel to run its affairs.

“Today, there are so many Ph.D holders working in some local government councils and there are those with master degrees. What do they mean by saying that local governments lack the capacity?

“In fact, there are more qualified people in some local government areas than the state; that argument is not tenable at all. For anybody to say there are no qualified people is a disservice to the nation,” Akun further said.

He advised state Houses of Assembly that are yet to pass the bill to do so, in order to support the financial autonomy of local governments.