Governors have bastardised our local council system, says Obasanjo

Obasanjo 

The 774 local government areas (LGAs) have been rendered “impotent” and almost “bastardised,” following the massive encroachment into their affairs by state governors, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said yesterday.

He stressed that the “glaring injustice and overbearing influence of the governors on the LGAs are such that they cannot tolerate it should the Federal Government elect to treat them the same way.

The ex-president spoke when a 60-member delegation of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) visited him at his home on the Presidential Hilltop Estate, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

The delegation, led by the NULGE National President, Ibraheem Khaleel, came to Obasanjo’s home to solicit for his support towards freeing the LGAs from the alleged “asphyxiating grip of the nation’s 36 state governors”.

The NULGE President said the union had come to Obasanjo to join in the rescue mission of the LGA system, noting that as founding member of the administration in 1976, they had autonomy of the third tier in mind.

But Obasanjo, who listened to them, said he was helpless about their plights. He noted that when the LGAs were reformed in 1976, by the then military government, which he was a part, it gave LGAs” functions, responsibilities and duties” to perform.

He said it is saddening now to observe that state governors’ interference has completely eroded the “sanctity and constitutionality” of the law establishing LGAs.