The Association of Local Government Chairmen (ALGON), Oyo State branch, has slammed a directive by the state government to the caretaker chairmen to put up N15million each for the building of an ultra-modern secretariat complex for the Local Government Service Commission and staff pension board.
It described it as a fraudulent scheme to siphon council funds.
ALGON, in a statement signed yesterday by its Chairman in the state, Prince Ayodeji Abass-Aleshinloye, said after considering the issue diligently, it found out that the directive was a fraudulent scheme to siphon council funds by using the illegal caretaker chairmen as pawns. “It is a white elephant project designed to siphon money regularly from local government purse,” the statement said.
Referring to the memo issued by a Permanent Secretary, Local Government Service Commission, on the directives of Governor Seyi Makinde, ALGON said the memo was illegitimate and contravened the constitution, which granted financial, project choice and implementation autonomy to councils.
“The illegality becomes more pronounced when the huge fund is expected to be coughed out by illegal caretakers, who in principle and law, must not have access to local government account. This is also a breach of NFIU guideline on local government finances.” ALGON said.
The statement further said: “Building an imaginary secretariat is not, cannot and must not be a priority of any serious people-focused, responsible local government administration in view of compelling needs to provide good roads, renovate dilapidated primary schools, primary health centres, provide water, markets, agricultural inputs, among others, for the grassroots.
”These illegal caretakers are hereby warned in their own interest not to be accomplices to this ‘ultra-modern’ fraud by the government. It is a sure way to the Economic and Financial Commission (EFCC) net, to prosecution and eventual imprisonment.
The governor has immunity against arrest and prosecution, which they don’t have, so don’t be entrapped by any illegal governorship order. In a democracy, there is nothing like “obey the last order” and ignorance is never an excuse in law.
We advise them not to ruin their lives because of mere pittance they may receive from the “ultra modern” loot. No law, we repeat, no law empowers a governor to direct local government administrators to release money or stylishly loot for him.
Local government finances are properly budgeted for based on needs assessment of the council area and appropriately approved by the legislative arm. Anything to the contrary is fraud and stealing by tricks.”
ALGON also referred to what it described as the panicky auctioning of local government property on the eve of its resumption in office.
“It will be recalled that we also alerted the public on the panicky auctioning of local government property by the illegal contraption tagged caretaker committees on the eve of our recent resumption of office and the N3million ‘chop money’ illegally withdrawn from each council account to sponsor thuggery and violence against our resumption.”
The association cautioned the state government against its continued resort to blackmail as contained in the corruption allegation against the council chairmen because it refused the out-of-court settlement from the government based on principle. It urged the government to recognise the legitimacy of the council chairmen.
“In order to achieve this crude objective, some senior council officials are being lured or intimidated to lie, while those who refused to join in the conspiracy of false allegations against the elected chairmen are punitively transferred outside their council areas against the norms and rules of staff transfer because they refused to manufacture figures and cook books to implicate chairmen since the books are clean and the records are unambiguous.
