Immediate past Chairman of Isolo Local Council Development Area of Lagos State, Hon. Shamsudeen Olaleye a.k.a Shammeh, has posited that clamouring for Local Government Autonomy in Lagos is not necessary because of the operational unifying system in the state.
Shammeh who made this position on Wednesday, 11 October, 2023, as a guest on a radio programme, LG Connect, on Smailz 98.7 FM, Lagos, said the word autonomy has no place in the Lagos operating system because “we know what comes in and how it’s disbursed”.
According to him, the word autonomy as it affects operation of Councils in Lagos State is mere semantics.
“We are only playing with words as far as that word autonomy is concerned in Lagos Councils administration in that, we have an idea of what is coming in, what we are getting and we decide how it is spent.
“In Lagos, we operate a unifying system which is working perfectly and better than whatever the autonomy being craved elsewhere intends to achieve”.
The former Council boss said councils in the state are grappling with fund challenge, adding that the fund is not there for them to execute projects.
“The idea of generating income through tax is out of it because poverty is not in any other place but the Local government. There is a limit the people can be pressured into paying tax, when the people themselves look up to the Councils for palliative.
“What comes to the Council in terms of fund allocation may appear big, but grossly inadequate when one consider the enormous challenge that are needed to be tackled. Imagine a Council has a road repair budget of N60 million and gets N70 million from the federation account. It does not add up.
Shammeh who maintained that a cordial relationship is required between the Local Government and other tiers of government in a state said the recent altercation in Ogun state between the Governor, Dapo Abiodun and a Council boss who later got arrested and detained on the orders of the governor wouldn’t have happened in Lagos because of the relationship between the administrators in the different tiers in the state.
“There is need for mutuality among the administrative heads of government’s in councils, Assembly and the Governor.
“This is politics where different interests are at play, so, there is the need to ensure those interests do not clash, hence, the need for a watertight relationship among the top players. That is what is obtainable in Lagos. That incident that happened in Ogun can not happen in Lagos,” Shammeh maintained.
