Briga News Nigeria
…says Bayelsa practising local government autonomy
Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Douye Diri has called for the creation of additional local government areas in Bayelsa State.
The governor made the call while speaking to journalists in Abuja following his Appeal Court victory in the gubernatorial election.
Gov. Diri said:”First in Bayelsa, we don’t believe that we have been fairly treated. That we have just 8 local government areas as opposed to some other states with 44 and 40 local government areas. That to us is injustice. That is not fair.
Our position from the beginning of this discuss has been that states should take charge of the number of local governments they can create. The number of local governments that they can cater for. You don’t create local governments and take resources from one state and cater for the local governments in another state. That is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
And I stand as the governor of Bayelsa State, to say that we need to correct these injustices. And these are things that bring up bottled up anger and becomes remote causes that will explode one day.
For local government autonomy, in Bayelsa it is known secret that Bayelsa State government has been the source of the strength of local governments. We have not only augmented for local governments, we have set up a system that is making local governments to be functional in Bayelsa State.
Local governments are not only paying salaries, local governments from when we took over are now involved in capital projects and having savings. And they are all been managed by the councils, not by Bayelsa State government.
The issue of JAAC, the joint account is to enable the state government fill the gap where there are gaps in other local government areas.”
