Recover LGAs hijacked by Governors, group charges Nigerians
By Tom Okpe
A group, Peasants Empowerment Concern Initiative, PECi, has charged Nigerians to wake up from its slumber, and recover their Local Government Areas hijacked by Governors.
The group gave this charge on Sunday ahead of the first anniversary of financial autonomy granted to LGAs, by the Supreme Court landmark judgment of July 11, 2024.
Dr Osita Okechukwu, spokesman and coordinator of the group at a press conference in Abuja on Sunday said: “Our dear Compatriots, four days to the first anniversary of financial autonomy granted to LGAs by the Supreme Court, we are alarmed that our countrymen are sleeping over our right.”
According to Okechukwu, the group regretted the utter contempt of this landmark judgment, lamenting that Nigerians have regrettably and ignorantly refused, management of their local government funds as granted by the Supreme Court judgment.
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PECi cited examples of the casualties suffered because of Nigerians laxity or sheer ignorance of holding their councillors accountable as demanded by the Supreme Court judgment, such as absence of primary school pupils of the Federal Capital Territory from classes for months since the beginning of 2025, Mokwa flood disaster, palpable insecurity at the LGAs, and dilapidated rural roads.
The group recounted that; “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor and witness to the financial repression at the grassroots level consequent upon planlessness and squandermania which made nonsense of the humongous revenues that accrued from Federal Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, to LGCs in 25 years of our 4th Republic, resorted to the Supreme Court to resolve the impasse.
“LG is the foundation of our grassroots democracy and corollary financial autonomy is the handgun for the expansion of its frontiers and improvement of the prosperity of peasants residents in our 8,809 wards mostly located in rural communities nationwide,” he stated.
The group appealed to all patriots and people of goodwill to rise up and collectively recover our patrimony and bid goodbye to the governors who have hitherto hijacked local government funds, pledging to “adopt checks and balances, feedback mechanism in guarding and monitoring management of revenue accruing monthly from FAAC to our 774 Local Government Councils.”
The group disclosed that its strategy of vetting Local Government Councils finance is primarily real time information on multimedia; radio, televisions, print media, and the social media.
