Karimi: National Assembly Will Back Tinubu on Recovery of Trillions of Naira Stolen LG Funds

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Services, Senator Sunday Steve Karimi, has stated that the National Assembly fully supports President Bola Tinubu’s call for practical and unfettered financial autonomy for local government councils.Karimi, who represents the Kogi West Senatorial Zone, said the parliament would enact relevant laws to ensure strict compliance with the Supreme Court’s judgment on fiscal autonomy for the third tier of government.

Karimi, who spoke while hosting his constituents during the yuletide break, recalled the landmark July 25, 2024, ruling of the Supreme Court, which directed the seamless federal allocation of funds to the 774 councils.

He quoted the judgment as saying that “state governors’ control over local government resources is unconstitutional, while also voiding caretaker committees as illegal.”Senator Karimi observed that the judgment aimed to “strengthen grassroots democracy and governance by ensuring that allocations go directly to elected officials, without state interference.”He recalled that the ruling’s overall aim is also to improve service delivery at the critical local government level of the governance pyramid.

Karimi observed that, despite this explicit declaration by the highest court in the land, some states have continued to disregard and disrespect the ruling.According to Karimi, “cognisant of the errant conduct of some state governors on the issue, President Tinubu warned at the recent National Executive Committee meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC) a fortnight ago, that he may be compelled to issue an Executive Order to whip defaulting governors into line.”

The President, Karimi observed, had exercised restraint toward nonconformists for so long, despite his power to compel them to do what is right.

Said Karimi: “The National Assembly will prioritise the matter of the non-adherence of certain governors across the broad spectrum, to the subsisting Supreme Court ruling on local government financial autonomy. We will support the president with relevant laws that will be retroactively effective. The laws will track the kleptomania and squandermania of governors who have been looting the commonwealth of the people of Nigeria. “They will be prosecuted, compelled to make returns and punished for undermining the well-being of the generality of the people, by wilfully stealing what rightly belongs to them.”

Speaking further, Karimi said that trillions of naira had been pilfered from Nigerians’ resources by gluttonous governors.

His words: “There is consensus that no administration in contemporary history has made as many resources available to states and local government areas as Tinubu’s government, but the people are barely feeling the impact in many places.

“During the screening of service chiefs recently, the Chief of Defence Staff noted that not allowing LGAs to function has contributed to insecurity in the country, creating lots of ungoverned space in the country.

“Some governors, their godfathers and members of their cabals, put a knife to local government funds every month, as their own ‘dessert’ after meals.”

This, the Kogi West Senator noted, “is why the local government system is dysfunctional and incapable of rendering the most basic services to their constituents. It is the reason many parts of the country have become dangerous, ungoverned spaces and operational bases for terrorists. Governors who have been wilfully denying the people the resources for development, their aiders and abetters, and their rabid defenders in the media will meet their comeuppance when the parliament enables the appropriate legislation.”

According to Senator Karimi, in some states of the federation, the allocation of LGAs is being outright stolen. While local government funds are transferred to the LGAs’ bank accounts, the state then operates voucher-racketeering schemes, in which documents are processed for fictitious jobs that are never executed. At the same time, the relevant supervisory councillors and chairmen are compelled to sign and approve such fraudulent vouchers, which amount to billions of naira per month. No jobs are carried out, while funds are looted steadily and regularly. Chairmen dare not complain for fear of their lives because the ruling gangs in some states are deadly. This type of fraud shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century in Nigeria.