TheCable

Sunday Oyediran, Onpetu of Ijeru, a town in Ogbomoso, Oyo state, wants a role to be carved out for traditional rulers in the system of local government administration.

Oyediran said this would serve as a way out of the failure of the third tier of government to cater for the lives of its teeming grassroots people.

The lecture themed: ‘Wedlock as hemlock: States, local government accounts and the future of the local government’, was delivered by Festus Adedayo, former special adviser on media to Abiola Ajimobi, the state governor.

The monarch had disagreed with a submission by the guest lecturer who had stated that arguments canvassing that those who want councils to replicate today the first republic experience which had traditional rulers getting involved in the administration of their regions, do not realsze that it would not produce any positive results as traditional rulers themselves were part of the local government problem.

But Oyediran used his personal developmental efforts in the area of healthcare and many others in his Ijeru area as an example of what traditional rulers could do if integrated into their local government administration

In an earlier lecture, Adedayo had said that in a democracy, local government administration was more important to the people than the two other tiers of government. as it has the advantage of making swift and great impacts on the lives of the people, as well as “serve as a potent system to mobilize people for local participation in governance.”

He said it had the advantage of making swift and great impacts on the lives of the people, as well as “serve as a potent system to mobilize people for local participation in governance”.

He knocked both the 1976 local government reforms and the 1999 constitution for their failure to give council administration the bite it needs.

Adedayo said some sections of the constitution actually handed over local governance to the whims and caprices of state governments.

He criticised section 7(1) and section 160, sub-sections (2) to (8)) of the constitution for stating that states houses of assembly should legislate on council administration, as well as creating the state joint local government account (SJLGA).

“What this means is that the amounts allocated to the local government will only get to them indirectly through the instrumentality of their state governments,” Adedayo said.

“Through all manner of shenanigans, state governments now funnel out huge resources meant for the development of the grassroots, hiding under the SJLGAs which have become infamous as cesspits of fraud.

“The result is that there is irrefutable squalor at the grassroots and regimes of bad imitation of locality administration.

“Consequently, governance in councils is at a standstill, uneventful and is today a converse of its projected role of interfacing between the people and local governance.”