Daily Independent Online.
*
Monday,July 19, 2004.
Group wants LG
officials residing outside domain sanctioned
By Bassey Udo
Senior
Correspondent,
Abuja
The Akwa Ibom State Ethical and Attitudinal
Reformation Commission (EARCOM) wants the government to initiate sanctions
against local government officials residing outside their domains.
The commission is lobbying the government
to prevail on affected officials to live with the people they govern. It is
also planning to sponsor a bill in the House of Assembly that would prescribe
stiff sanctions against erring officials.
In the past week, EARCOM had in several
sponsored radio and television programmes been sensitising the people on the
need to prevail on their representatives to live among them to carry out the
mandate they swore to execute.
Chairman of the commission, Eseme Eyiboh, said
a situation where council officials choose to reside in urban areas and merely
come to their domains to perform their statutory functions was not only
negating the essence of that tier of government, but was against the spirit of
their mandate.
"The essence of the local government
as the third tiers of government in a democracy is to bring governance closer
to the people at the grassroots. If elected officials abandon their domain and
take up residence in the town that purpose would have been defeated," he
noted.
Eyiboh said the commission is sensitising
indigenes on the need to ensure that their council officials are not allowed to
live outside their primary constituencies.
He noted that most top council officials in
Akwa Ibom, particularly chairmen, secretaries and heads of personnel and
administration departments prefer to live in the state capital and other urban
areas on the excuse that they want adequate security.
He wondered why the officials have suddenly
realised that the councils where they campaigned for votes without fear are now
insecure after they have been elected.
Eyiboh said it was only officials that have
nothing to show for the huge monthly allocations they collect from the
federation account that are afraid to live with their people.
Saying most of the
officials were inaccessible to the people they were meant to serve, the EARCOM
boss noted that the huge expenditure on their flamboyant lifestyles in the
urban areas could have been used to provide essentials infrastructures to
better the lives of the people.
