By POPOOLA YAQOUB, Ado-Ekiti

The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) has been tasked to be alive to its responsibilities in exposing and tackling corruption at the grassroots .

This was the thrust of the capacity building workshop tagged: ‘Needs Assessment for Community Development and Service Delivery’, in local government areas organized by the Coalition of Civil Society Organisation (CSOs).

The Coalition noted that the massive corruption and diversion of public funds at the third tier of government, has been perpetrated unabated due to ineffeciencies of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission(ICPC).

A Senior programme Officer, Public Finance Accountability Centre, Prince Ekpere Edegbuo, said: “EFCC and ICPC must wake up and find a way of curbing embezzlement of public funds , because the 774 Councils are doing nothing to benefit the people.

“The diversion of federal allocations to that tier by the executive arm have made our councils lameduck. The anti graft agencies seem not interested in going after those embezzling the LG funds.

“The motive behind this workshop is to ensure that we achieve autonomy for our local governments. They must be truly independent.

“We want the participants to go and engage their councilors, chairmen and other council representatives on their need assessment, so that we can hold our local government representative accountable.

“The councils are the closest to the citizens and we must remove them from the appendage of the states. The states can’t be telling the LGs what to do for the people. The LGs must be allowed to be autonomous”, he said.

Also backing restructuring of the local government system, a staff of the Life and Peace Development Organisation, Mr. Franklyn Oloniju, stated that the workshop was conceived to build a movement that can guarantee independence for the local government system.

He said: “There has been a disconnect between the local government and the Nigerian citizens and we are here to build a network that can bring government and the governed together. There was local development plan in the past, where the locals participated effectively in budgeting and other programmes”.

The Chairman, National Youth Council of Nigeria(NYCN), Com. Eyitayo Fabunmi, advised that community must start monitoring how the local governments are governed in the country .

“If the party brings up a bad candidate, the people must reject before or through election. Local government is no longer productive and the people were not complaining about their inefficiencies. If they refuse to talk, these shoddy arrangements will continue”, he warned. (Daily Independent)

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