Alien to the provisions of the
constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria is a contraption called the Governors
Forum. By all standards, it is an association of gangs of governors, a strong
pressure group embedded with selfish, hidden and greedy agenda. As its name
implies, it is composed of all the 36 state governors regardless of party
affiliations, and headed by a chairman, a secretary and maybe some other excos.
Unknown to Nigerians, Senator Bukola Saraki is a past chairman. F all our
observation the forum is intended to arrogate power to the state governors to
muzzle power from the president in terms of financial matters. Example is as it
concerns the joint account with the local government. The governors using their
forum to protect themselves intercept the federal allocations meant for the local
governments and use it frivolously.
The members of the Governors Forum of course
truly know their unions, they pretend as if things are wrong with Federal
Government in order to deceive the citizens or their state’s work force.
They fraudulently embark on white
elephant projects using their provisos; it could be children, wives or friends,
it is on these project excuses they owe workers’ salaries. Before Nigerians began
to notice the governors’ insincerity, it had been series of lies against the
Federal Government of not paying allocation.
Top on the list of insincere and
dishonest governors is Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State. In fact this man
has been able to deceive the people all the time. For instance, he has not
conducted the local government election since he assumed power over five years
ago, yet he collects the state and local government allocations on monthly
basis.
Aregbe as he is fondly called is not
paying any salary, allowance or whatever in the local government political
structure as it is ought to be because there is none. Maybe because he
understands he has made the Osun people to be poorer to the extent of not being
able to feed their children, no wonder he cook meals daily for school pupils and
this Beth News views it as a simple way to defraud the people.
Where is the highly
publicized fragile ‘Opon- Imo’ (tablet) supplied by his first son? Go round
Osun secondary schools you will find none, even after hundreds of millions of naira
was squandered on the 419 project. Gbangan junction to Sekona road or
thereabout, a distance of less than 20 kilometers has been under repeated
construction and re-construction for the last four years by one Ratcon Nigeria
Ltd, an engineering firm of one of the APC leaders in Lagos. Several billions
of naira has been sunk into this project with no positive result, yet
propaganda is the instrument of governance in Osun; the state has been plunged into
serious debts even with seven month of workers’ salary owned.
Fine Boy Gabriel Suswan of Benue State was
by far the worst governor the state has ever had. He is full of ego and used
most of his important time to confront the labour union. He also may not be
able to account for the billions of allocation he has collected in his eight
years’ tenure, yet he owed several months of workers salary. We can write this
without mentioning the former chairman of the Governors Union (sorry, Forum),
Hon. Rotimi Chibike Ameachi. He is obviously more of a liability than asset to
the present Federal Government. Ameachi is not mentally and morally mature, his
verbal attacks are extremely crude. Therefore one imagines how the civilized
Riverians could have elected such a thug as an executive of a state. On several
occasions he had caused series of violence; he once said if APC loses they would
form a parallel government. All his utterances are always reeking with bad
smells. Each time he speaks he speaks evil, even his look depicts evil. A two-term
Rivers assembly man and a two-term governor arguably should be a man of
character, but no he has no integrity.
Hear him: “I want to see how Wike will
be able to pay workers’ salary in the months ahead…” Rivers State is broke,
imagine, a former chairman of Governors Forum with bad belly could descend so
low to the extent of conducting local government election seven days to the end
of his tenure. Ameachi and his collaborators sat down somewhere to write the
names of 29 chairman and councilors and hurriedly swore them in and inaugurated
them with the claim that he spent N4.3 billion to conduct the election. Unless one
is gullible, Ameachi has done more harm to the Rivers people through his
thuggery, arrogance and fraudulent style of governance. A visit to the Rivers
State House will frighten a sensible person. Beth News learnt Ameachi and his
officials have vandalized everything possible ranging from furniture, rugs and electronics.
The ministries were equally not spared. For now no one could even assess how
many months or years Ameachi owes except one verifies from the workers
themselves.
In a nutshell, none of governors are
saints, yet serve as a common front to confront the Presidency, pocket the local
governments and enslave their citizenry just they use the forum to protect their interests
in the ever complex political structure of the country. For example, the governors
often speak with one voice on the issue of state-local government joint
account, they are always against the scrapping of the joint account system for
clear and obvious reasons. Beth News urges President Buhari to watch the states
very well, otherwise every gain made by his government may be punctured by
their actions.
We are not unaware of how the governors
had been lying against the last federal administration over allocation. Actually,
now that the allocation has dropped which is as a result in the drop of our
revenue, why can’t the governors cut their coats according to their cloth?
The IGR also are being either directly
looted or misappropriated. The states are not moving forward, because of the
dishonesty and the monopolistic nature, most times by the assembly men who are
supposed to perform to checks and balances.
Lastly the Federal Government should be
watchful and completely be at alert over state and local government financial affairs
otherwise the two will throw spanners in the work of the Federal Government as
they did to former President Jonathan.
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