Majority blindly blame the president for the state of the nation, but in reality the federal government has little effect on our daily lives. Electricity and telecommunications provision has been privatized like in the western world, leaving mainly education, health and transportation shared among the 3 tiers of government.
The federal government by law only constructs and maintains interstate roads, while the state government constructs the major roads linking local governments within towns. Recently, most state and federal are being attended to but the road from our houses still remain non-existent or in terrible conditions. These are wholly local government roads, and with the exception of Ibeju-Lekki local government am yet to see a functioning local government.
Most local government chairman see their allocations as monies to be shared amongst themselves. To make matters worse, state governors often sack local government chairmen throughout the state and appoint caretakers, therefore blurring the line between state and local governments. Some argue that local government allocations should be paid directly, but what are the checks and balances in place that the chairman won’t swallow all allocations.
Since we don’t practise through grassroot democracy the attention is on the federal level to the detriment of what really affects our everyday lives. For Nigeria to work for the common man, we have to empower our local governments or just scrap them and share their responsibilities between the other tiers of government. Anything but the status quo whereby federal allocations to LGA are shared like NURTW loot.
