By; IBRAHIM ADAMU, Kaduna
In its quest to ensure development and quality service delivery at the grassroots, a non-profit organization known as Local Government Accountability Mechanism (LGAM), has renewed calls for citizen participation in the process of drafting, execution and implementation of budgets.
State facilitator of LGAM, Yusuf Goje made the call in a paper presentation at a workshop organized in collaboration with UK aid Agency and Partnership To Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) in Kaduna to strategize on working accountability mechanism to ensure provision of dividends of democracy in 23 local government areas of the state.
He stressed the need for effective implementation of development plan, capable of stimulating infrastructure development, transparency in governance and equitable spread of projects across Kaduna State.
Goje further emphasised the exigency of citizens at the grassroots, whom he noted as beneficiaries of government fiscal exercise to track and monitor projects in their communities to ensure completion and delivery of quality service.
” In a situation where citizens are not active in deciding what they want provided for them by the government, we’ll have an uneven spread of projects that have no impacts on lives of people.
” Public awareness must be strengthened at the grassroots level to educate citizens of their role and responsibilities in a democratic experiment like ours .
” Projects with immediate use and benefit to the community must be prioritized and provided for effective development and sustainable economic growth of the populace who should be number one preoccupation of elected officials,” he said.
He however, expressed sadness over absence of local government autonomy, disclosing that it has limited the powers of elected officials at grassroots whom he noted, are the closest to communities, to fully take charge of affairs of their people and be held responsible for failure or success.
“The inability of local government chairmen to effectively deliver quality service to their people could be attributed to state governors excessive control of their resources which has made them lame ducks incapable of exerting powers of execution.
“It is high time the autonomy of the LG is revisited and dealt with once and for all for the good of generations yet unborn and growth of democracy in Nigeria.
“LGs in the country are having fiscal sustainability constraints because most of their responsibilities and functions have beeb hijacked by state governors.
“Unfortunately, under civil rule, we have witnessed more efforts to weaken the closest tier of government,” he lamented .
The accountability advocate debunked narratives in some quarters, accusing local government areas of inability of managing their affairs, saying with full autonomy, fixed term of office, abolishing caretaker system and all necessary mechanism of governance provided, the third tier he believes, would perform wonders in governance.
