The Governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, on Wednesday, 4 January 2023 inaugurated liaison officers for the 18 Local Government Areas of the State, at the Government House, in Benin City.
According to him, the officers are to serve as his eyes and ears in their LGAs to keep him regularly updated and to ensure the Local Governments are self-sufficient before LG elections are held in the next few months.
In his remarks, he said: “As you all know, the local governments are a very key plank of our development process. Unfortunately, we have not been able to conduct elections in our local governments.
“We have had a lacuna in terms of political governance for these local governments. We have had to use civil servants to manage the local governments for over a year, and this is not ideal.
“We expect that we will be able to have elections for the local governments after this series of elections; but our concern as a government is that we don’t want to start another year, leaving the local government unguarded in terms of policy direction for the government.
“So we decided that we would appoint liaison officers who report to me directly in each local government to let me know what is going on with the Local Governments.”
Highlighting the challenges facing the local governments, Obaseki said: “We had expected that we would have a local government council in place, and I asked that we conduct audits of each Local Government in 2021.
“One of the challenges we saw from the audit was the inability of the local governments to sustain themselves financially.
“There were about 3 or 4 local governments who cannot cover their salary bills on an ongoing basis; because by the time they distribute what comes from federal allocations, they have very little or no revenue base and very high cost of staff.
“The local governments are supposed to be independent and self-sufficient.”
The governor continued: “We believe in local government autonomy, but you cannot be autonomous if you cannot pay your bills.
“So for us, local government autonomy means local governments have to be run properly so that they can be self-sufficient.
“These people we’ve appointed as my liaison, I believe that their tenure will not last more than 120 days because by then we should have conducted elections.
“They must be able to give me a report so that we can put our Local Governments on the right footing so that even when we have a new government coming into the local governments, we the citizens can know how to monitor the performance of these persons.”
Furthermore, the governor commented on some of the responsibilities of the local governments, calling for efficiency and effectiveness in carrying out their duties.
“It’s the dry season. We have a long rainy season. This is the time local governments should be able to grade roads and improve access.
“I need to have a very transparent view of what is going on in each local government; of what it costs to grade roads and how many roads are being graded.
“One of the major issues we will have to deal with is sanitation, because we can’t continue this way. People now just trade in every inch of the right of way. It is the responsibility of the Local Governments to control street trading.
“The next 90 days, we must make sure we send very clear signals that we must clean, and then before the rains, we start to green our state.”
Speaking on the security architecture of the State, the governor said: “The Local Governments are supposed to coordinate the security networks within their domains.
“Towards the end of last year, as we did a review, we realized that the local governments are not putting in as much support, because communities are now used to community networks.”
In a vote of thanks, on behalf of the newly inaugurated liaison officers, the liaison officer for Orhionmwon Local Government, Hon. Newman Ugiagbe, appreciated the governor for the opportunity to serve.
He said: “We are ready to make sure that there is that good synergy between the Local Governments and the State. We will put in our best to be able to make the State proud and make our Local Governments more viable in the nearest future.
“We will do what is needed, and I assure you, on behalf of my colleagues, the outlined duties will be carried out as soon as possible, and to the best of our ability.” he said
