State govs’ corruption fuelling poor rural development — Buhari

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Post created on 10:54 am

 

 

President Muhammadu Buhari has slammed state governors over what he described as their unfair treatment of the administration at the local government level across the country.

The President spoke after delivering his speech at an event hosted for members of the Senior Executive Course 44 (2022) of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Thursday.

He said it beats anyone’s imagination how some state governors would collect money on behalf of local government areas in their states, only to remit just half of such allocation to the Council chairmen, who would further deplete the remittance in further pilfering of public resources.

The President, however, related the development to the question of lack of integrity in the character of many of those holding such public offices as those of governorship and local government council chairmanship, adding that such actions are rather despicable and speak of the height of corruption in the country.

News reports has it that Buhari’s verdict comes barely 24 hours after the federal government blamed the high poverty rate in the country on the failure of the State governors to contribute their quota of development responsibilities.

Minister of State for Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, were doing to ameliorate the biting hardship being faced by a majority of Nigerians at the moment.

According to him, the federal government, through many of its social security programmes, has been dedicating resources to alleviating hardship on the public, noting that state governments, which have been consistently receiving their shares of national resources, had been misdirecting the resource to project that has almost no direct effect on the needs of the people.

He said that 72% of the poverty in Nigeria is found in the rural areas, which he said had been abandoned by governors.

The minister added that the state executives preferred to function in the state capitals.

He lamented that state governors were concentrating on building flyovers, airports, and other projects that are visible in the state capitals rather than investing in areas that directly uplift the standard of life of the people in the rural areas.

Agba pointed out that while states are in charge of land for agriculture, they do not invest in them for the desired effect on their rural citizens.

He, therefore, advised the state governors that rather than concentrate attention on the building of skyscrappers, flyovers, and bridges, they should focus on initiatives that can pull the majority of the people out of poverty.