Reps begin probe today
Area council chairmen mum
Amid controversies surrounding the performance of the council chairmen in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the six area councils have been estimated to have received a total of N16,663,045,626.58 from the FCT Joint Account Allocation Committee between October 2023 and May 2024.
The allocation is different from other sums also running into billions of naira set aside for payment of teachers’ salaries and pensions of local employees of the area councils.
The area councils also get millions of naira monthly from their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), through a string of taxes they have imposed on businesses, vehicles, among others.
Stakeholders in the administration of the nation’s capital have berated the performances of the councils’ chairmen despite the huge monthly allocations to the councils’ coffers.
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The House of Representatives Committee on the Federal Capital Territory and Ancillary Matters will today begin investigation of the six area council chairmen over the spending of the allocations.
The chairmen include: John Gabaya (Bwari), Christopher Maikalangu (Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC), Abubakar Umar Abdullah (Abaji), Abdullahi Suleiman Sabo (Kuje), Abubakar Jibrin Giri (Gwagwalada), and Danlami Chiya (Kwali). Chiya is also the FCT chairman of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), FCT chapter.
The FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had while defending the 2024 budget at the National Assembly, said the council chairmen had failed to discharge their responsibilities to the residents.
Wike had warned that he would no longer tolerate their lacklustre attitude to development as the nation’s capital needed accelerated development, which he said, the area councils must take as priority.
The House of Representatives, which serves as House of Assembly for the FCT, had threatened to withhold the FCT area councils’ budgets for snubbing their invitations to explain to their expenditures in recent months.
Residents have also raised concerns over the performance of the six area council chairmen, which they describe as “poor”.
The breakdown of the disbursement of the over N16 billion shows that AMAC received the highest amount of N3,767,608,367.69 during the period.
Gwagwalada Area Council received N2,625,643,872.62; Kuje Area Council, N2,853,356,240.36; Bwari Area Council, N2,543,717,890.61; Abaji Area Council, N2,274,127,263.21 and Kwali Area Council, N2,598,591,992.06.
Residents score council chairmen low
FCT residents who spoke to Daily Trust, allege that they were not feeling the impact of governance as many of their roads and other infrastructure are in bad states.
Mr. Joseph Imran, a resident of Bwari, decried what he called the “poor sanitation and bad road network” in rural communities within the area.
A resident of Kawu, Mrs Alice Joseph, said apart from the poor state of roads in the area, water scarcity is also a problem.
“If you come to some of the communities around us here, especially during the dry season, you will see how women are suffering to get water. They sometimes drink from the same stream with cows and all efforts to get the attention of some of the area councils to some of these communities have so far yielded no results,’’ she said.
Residents of Kwali Area also scored the Council low in terms of performance.
One of them, Danlami Joseph, said the council chairman ought to pay attention to developmental projects that would have positive impacts on residents.
Another resident, Ishaya Kaura, claimed that, “The only thing the chairman is good at is stomach infrastructure and buying vehicles and motorcycles for his cronies and political loyalists.”
In the Abaji Area Council, residents who spoke said the huge funds allocated to the council could not be justified by the number of projects on ground.
Some of them, who admitted that the council had constructed an 80-bed hospital at the low-cost housing and roads at Road Safety quarters and Sabon Tasha, said such projects did not match the revenue that the council had been receiving.
A resident, Shuaibu Ahmed said: “If we must say the truth, the funds the present administration has received for just one year alone is double what the past administration got for six years, and I am not sure if the projects the present administration has executed are worth up to N1 billion”.
Residents of Kuje Area, who also spoke, said the situation in their area was pathetic as no meaningful projects could be linked to the present administration in the council.
A resident, Abdullahi Musa, said the council needed to do more in the area of providing access roads in the rural communities, provision of water, health and sanitation.
Residents of some communities under AMAC said the authority had been trying in the areas of healthcare facilities’ upgrading and road rehabilitation.
They, however, said more should be done in view of the fact that the council had been receiving the highest of the monthly allocations, coupled with a number of taxes it had been collecting from the residents.
Residents of Gwagwalada Area, when spoken to, asked the authority to go beyond prioritising rural infrastructure and look at many other areas begging for attention.
Amina Ahmed, a school teacher, said roads within the headquarters of the council are in bad shape.
“It will be difficult for you to drive through the main junction to get to the FRCN office. That road is very important before the market is there. There are thousands of people living in that area”, she said.
“Water supply and sanitation are poor; it is unbecoming of a local council,” said Blessing Okon, who owns a shop at the market in Gwagwalada.
Area council chairmen mum
Attempts to speak to the chairmen individually were not successful as they refused to speak to our correspondents.
Also, the ALGON chairman in the FCT, Chiya, by virtue of his position as their leader, neither answered phone calls nor replied to text messages sent to him by our reporters seeking his reaction to the allegations of poor performance levelled against the area council chairmen.
Chiya had, last week when he and his colleagues accompanied the FCT Minister of State, Mariya Mahmud to the National Assembly, said they were ready for probe.
Reps to begin probe of council chairmen today
The probe of the area council chairmen by the House Committee on FCT and Ancillary Matters is billed to commence today.
The chairman of the committee, Hon. Frederick Agbedi, had, at a hearing last Tuesday, accused the area council bosses of dodging invitations seeking their explanations of how they had been spending the funds.
According to a schedule provided by the Clerk of the Committee, the chairman of Abaji Area Council will appear before the committee today; while his Bwari counterpart will appear tomorrow.
Thursday will be the turn of the chairman of Gwagwalada Area Council; Kuje Area Council, July 30; Kwali, July 31 and AMAC, August 1.
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