Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has expressed concern over Thursday\u2019s Supreme Court judgment affirming local governments\u2019 right to receive monthly allocations directly from the federation account.<\/p>\n
The chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party emphasised that despite the court judgment, state Houses of Assembly and the governors will always be a clog in the wheel of local government autonomy.<\/p>\n
Fayose said this when he featured as a guest on Sunday\u2019s edition of Channels Television\u2019s Politics Today.<\/p>\n
While stressing that nobody from the grassroots can emerge as a local government chairman without the support of a governor, the Ekiti politician said both the court and FG \u2018cannot take the baby from the mother.\u2019<\/p>\n
Father who loses daughter to suicide in UK points fingers at ex-wife, daughter\u2019s ex-boyfriend0:00 \/ 1:01<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cI am not a lawyer. I am a politician and by God\u2019s grace today, I am an elder statesman. While I love and do not believe that any government should take local government funds, may I say to you very clearly this evening that you cannot take the baby from the mother? There is nobody that can become council chairman without a governor. Anybody telling you otherwise is wasting his time.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me quickly remind you that the House of Assembly of every state controls the activities and checkmates the activities of the local government. While I was governor, I had the privilege of receiving money from Abuja. When you receive money from the account, some people manage the account. They are not politicians or the council chairman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is only one representative of the governor, which is the local government commissioner. All others are local government officials, workers, and pensioners of the council. And they appropriate the funds. But when you now come and say we are giving power to the local government, what power are you giving to them? No power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continuing, the PDP chieftain said aside from the state lawmakers frustrating the process, most council officials don\u2019t take their work seriously.<\/p>\n
According to him, many workers don\u2019t bother to come to work on certain days of the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny council chairman who says \u2018Money is coming to me, I will disrespect my governor\u2019 the House of Assembly will tell you to go and disobey him inside your house. This is because you can never even be a council chairman without the governor standing up for you. The House of Assembly regulates your activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo to the council meeting on Wednesday or Friday, you will not find 10 per cent of the staff of the local government in the office. They don\u2019t come. My name is Ayo Fayose and I want them to dispute this. They don\u2019t come to work. When you make moves to bring them to book, both NULGE and all leaders of the local government will go and beg the governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will be telling you, we will not vote for you. This is the way we operate at the local government. The state is more effective in administrative performance than the local government. At the local government, everybody comes to collect money. Even people have left some states. They live somewhere else and money just hit their accounts,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has expressed concern over Thursday\u2019s Supreme Court judgment affirming local governments\u2019 right to receive monthly allocations directly from the federation account. The chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party emphasised that despite the court judgment, state Houses of Assembly and the governors will always be a clog in the wheel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38781,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38775\/revisions\/38781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}