Non-functional LGs cause of insecurity –ALGON president

Lack of functional local government councils is responsible for the spate of the insecurity in many parts of the country, President of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) Nwanbueze Okafor has said.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja, Okafor said most of the states where insecurity has become rife had suffered neglect and dysfunctional local government system over the years.

“A lot of the challenges we have in Nigeria are because we don’t have functional local government system. If you watch, you can see that most of the states where the security problems started, they don’t have functional local government system,” he said.

He said where the people at the grassroots are denied the opportunity of electing their leaders who will serve them directly, the people may feel aggrieved, saying “I can tell you that some just started having local government elections.”

“Some like Borno State have not had local government elections since 1998. So, you need to have a functional local government, that is really functional that the people can accept and that can address the needs of the people.”

He said: “the gaps between the people in the different communities and the states and federal government are so wide and distant. They don’t have the access to reach the government, so, the governments they can reach are the local governments.”

The ALGON president maintained that it is when those wrongs are corrected that “we would be able to get right a lot of things that are going wrong in Nigeria.”