You see I am not a lawyer but a politician and by the grace of God, an elder statesman and I will be very factual and very sincere. We are talking about three arms of Government – The Executive, Legislature & Judiciary.
While I love and do not believe any Governor should take Local Government funds may I say to you very clearly this evening, you cannot take the baby away from the mother. There is nobody that will become Local Government Chairman without the (help of) the Governor, anybody telling you otherwise is wasting his time.
Let me also remind you that the House of Assembly of every State checkmates and controls the activities of the Local Governments. So when you want to make laws, the house of assembly want to make laws, house of assembly will say that you are not doing this, you are suspended, and they say they want to give you the money of the local councils?
May I say to you when I was the Governor of Ekiti, I had the privilege of receiving money from Abuja to the Joint Accounts Allocation Committee (JAAC) account. When you receive money in the JAAC account, there are administrative persons that manage the account, not the politicians or the Council Chairmen alone, there is only one representative of the Governor who is the Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, all others are LG workers, LG officials, pensioners of the LG and they appropriate the funds.
But when you now come back and say we have given power to the LGs, what power have you given to them? No power. Any LG Chairman that says money is coming to me and I can disrespect my Governor, the House of Assembly will bring you and tell you to go and disrespect the Governor in your own house. This is because you can’t even become council chairman without the Governor standing up for you.
When you are in an opposing party, it’s a different ball game but even at that the house of assembly regulates your activities. Let me equally tell you this which needs to be addressed and I want ChannelsTV and most media houses to try and investigate what I want to tell you today, go to the Councils Mondays – Fridays, you will not find 10% of the staff of the LG in council. They don’t come, my name is Ayo Fayose, I want them to dispute this.
They don’t come to work, when you make moves to curb them and bring them to work, all of them both NULGE, leaders of the LG will come begging the Governor. They will even be telling you we will not vote for you, this is how we operate at the LG. Do you know the state is more effective than the LG in administrative performance?
At the LG, everybody comes to collect money, even people who live in other states, money just hit their account, so what are we even talking about.
