You cannot blame it all on the state governor, Bassey Otu. You have to empathize with the man, that the free funds his predecessors, Donald Duke, Liyel Imoke and Ben Ayade enjoyed without question, have suddenly been removed from him. Why so, why now? When the governor has finally woken up to the fact that very many people worked for his success and finally agreed that they deserved a spoon of broth in the general portage of the state. And now this!
But why did it take him so long to reward the foot soldiers and the race horses? Was it to show just how much power he holds over the healthy livelihood of the people or to recoup from election expenses. Your guess is as good as mine.
In Cross River State, for instance, the JAAC law details 13 statutory deductions from local government funds. Rural Development Agency – 9%, State Electrification Agency – 5%, Joint Security Operation – 2.5%, Local Government Service Commission – 1%, Ministry of Local Government Affairs – 1%, Joint Social Welfare – 2.5%, Border Communities Development – 0.5% and Sports Development – 1%. Others are Environmental Management and Protection – 2.5%, oversight functions of the House of Assembly – 0.5%, Community Social Development Agency – 0.5%, Cross River University of Technology – 1%, and Cross River Infrastructure Fund – 4%. What this means is that at least 30% of the funds meant for the local government areas are taken by the state every month. This is not just a few billions of Naira, it is really huge!
It is obvious, isn’t it, that many of the critical agencies that should deliver important services to the people are funded by local government funds. The Ministry of Local Government, Local Government Service Commission, Rural Development Agency, State Electrification Agency, Border Commission, Cross River University of Technology, etc, even the House of Assembly have all been taking life from local government funds. Now you understand that this Supreme Court judgement is a peculiar mess, what was tagged ‘kpenklemessi’ in the Western Region politics of the first republic. There is an urgent need for serious political and economic re-engineering to realign what can be and what can’t really be in the light of the new realities.
And now the die is cast. The things that happened yesterday can no longer trend, because the Supreme Court says so. Fourteen months after his inauguration, Governor Otu didn’t even think about conducting local government elections even when he knew he could have made infants, imbeciles and corpses local government chairmen who would be beholden unto him. He was only just now thinking of caretaker chairmen, who are usually lickspittles , cheerleaders and hallelujah boys, in the various local government areas. That is why I have always written that state governors exercise too much power and circumstance over the affairs of human beings which is inimical to the democracy we claim to practice.
Now that the Supreme Court has turned the tables, I hear that local government elections are well nigh in Cross River. Can you reckon with that? Money seems to dictate the proprietary and timing for all things, doesn’t it?
Kidzu, an essayist, novelist, media consultant and politician, wrote in from Calabar.
