Daily Independent Online.
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Friday, June 11, 2004.
Senate takes on govs over council funds
By Chesa Chesa,
National
Assembly, Abuja
The Senate has raised
the stakes in the controversy over the seizure of funds allocation to some councils, with a resolve to ensure
that governors who have not sworn in newly elected council chairmen be denied
federal money for such councils.
Abuja has for two months
withheld allocation from the Federation Account to five states that conducted
elections into newly created councils not listed in the Constitution.
The Senate wants the
government to widen the dragnet by also withholding allocations to any state
where the governor has not yet sworn in constitutionally recognised leaders in
the third tier of government.
Senate President
Adolphus Wabara said in Abuja at the end of a two-day seminar organised by the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for council chairmen elected on its
platform that some governors have deliberately delayed the inauguration of
council bosses so as to award contracts and flout financial regulations.
He said the Senate
would indeed “exert intense pressure on the Federal Government to
withhold the allocations to local government areas in the country where
democratically elected local government chairmen and councilors have not been
allowed to assume office”.
In a statement issued
on Thursday by his spokesman Henry Ugbolue, Wabara stressed that a situation in
which “certain governors connive with the heads of personnel management
(HPM) in councils to disburse funds or award contracts will no longer be
tolerated since the trend contravenes laid down financial regulations”.
He argued that the
development need be stopped now because neither the governors nor HPMs could be
held accountable in the event of a probe of the disbursement of allocation to
councils since they are not empowered by the Constitution to carry out such a
function.
To guard against the
practice, he added, the proper thing is for the Federal Government to seize
allocation to the affected councils pending when the governors would inaugurate
the elected officials.
He urged that council
workers be spared of the agony of the action by allowing state Assemblies to
compute their salaries and the money released accordingly.
Meanwhile, PDP has
called for a constitutional amendment to compel Abuja to transfer monthly
allocations directly to councils in order to stop alleged pilfering by governors.
The party directed
councils chaired by its members to henceforth publish monthly all allocations
received from the Joint State Local Government Accounts as well as all monies
generated internally.
These were contained
in a communiqué issued in Abuja on Thursday at the end of the seminar.
Signed by Haruna Dabir, Director-General of Peoples
Democratic Institute, it also demanded that the proposed amendments to the
Constitution spell out a uniform tenure for council administrators and
eliminate loopholes through which government appointees run councils.
