PDP slams el-Rufai over LG polls, urges FG to withhold funds

The Kaduna State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Youth Patriotic Front, under the leadership of Comrade Danjuma Bello Sarki, has decried the government of Governor Nasiru El-Rufai over the administration local government and called for withholding of funds meant for the 23 Local Government Areas of the state by federal government.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday on the state of affairs in Kaduna state under the purview of Governor El-Rufai, the PDP youth wing, led by Comrade Sarki, cried out that despite the huge sums of money accrued to the 23 local government areas, the councils have not experienced positive physical development.

In a prepared text read by Comrade Sarki, the youths who are alleging fraud, remarked that “N2.7billion subsidy re-investment programme (Sure-P) funds belonging to the 23 local government areas of the state, left behind by the last administration has disappeared and no one is hearing anything about.

“We are aware that the local government funds have become the slush funds for funding the El-Rufai administration’s bogus and spurious programmes and projects”, they alleged as they declared that “the widely publicized so-called local government autonomy granted by the Kaduna state government is nothing but a ruse aiming at misleading the public in order to score cheap political goal by Mallam Nasiru El-Rufai”.

Against the allegation, they challenged the government to “publicly publish the monthly local government by local government areas in the last nine months and that of the SURE-P funds” with a view to showing the “transparency and accountability they professed”.

They recalled that prior to his election, Governor El-Rufai had promised to democratize the local government with a view to allowing the people to elect who should work for them at that level, but regretted that about a year after his victory at the poll, the governor is yet to fulfil his promise.

They said from all indications, “the APC in Kaduna state is afraid of conducting local government council elections because of the embarrassing defeat that will befall it, hence the frivolous excuses they keep giving.

“We condemn this perpetual refusal of government to conduct local government council elections and demand that government should as a matter of urgency direct the state independent electoral commission to issue notice of election in accordance with the provisions of law”.

To this end, they enjoined federal government to “withhold the Kaduna state local government funds until a democratically elected government is in place”, arguing that “failure to conduct local government council polls by any state government as at when due is a constitutional breach that should attract appropriate sanctions.”