What The Papers Say
Sunday Concord, Nigeria, June 23, 1985
Local governments
While we await the official White Paper on the submissions of Local Government Review Commission, we observe with regret that one and a half years of the present military administration has so far not yet succeeded in ensuring that Nigeria's local governments play their role of an effective third tier.Everywhere in the country, local governments have all, but in name, turned into mere appendages of the arms of state government administration. Of course, the politicians of the Second Republic had been responsible for launching them into this functional irrelevance when they not only substituted party stalwarts (as members of local government caretaker committees) for elected local government functionaries, but in fact cunningly refused to conduct the mandatory elections into the councils thereafter. Besides, politicians at the state and Federal levels did also connive to deny the local governments their funds at that time.
Unfortunately, however, the military administration is yet to improve the political roles of the local governments any better than the politicians left them. Unlike the state and Federal Governments that took on new political executive after the December 31, 1983 coup local governments on the other hand fell to the lot of single bureaucrats called sole administrators. We have nothing personal against these professional bureaucrats. Yet not many will deny that without direct political supervision, these officials are wont to be misguided by unrealistic directives long ago formulated to meet the needs of another epoch instead of their present charges.
Moreover, the recent call on the Federal Government by the National conference on "the survival of local governments in Nigeria" to ensure that the 10 per cent statutory allocations from the state and Federal Governments are regularly paid to the local government joint account in each state, is no more than a muffled cry that all is still not well with the finances of local governments.
Be that as it may, we believe that the problems of the local governments revolve principally around the absence of effective and functional executive capacities in their present make-ups. In their present forms, it is like asking permanent secretaries to perform functions of state or Federal executive councils.
On the other hand, local governments ought to present the military administration with a good opportunity to lay a healthy foundation for future participatory democracy in this country. We counsel for an early beginning in this regard if this country is to develop on the political as well as the economic fronts.
Standard, Ghana, May 26, 1985
On the revolution from within
Last week on May 14, the wife of the Chairman of the PNDC, Mrs Agyeman Rawlings, gave a press conference entirety as a news item, all ten minutes of it! Mrs Agyeman which GBC Television was kind enough to feature in its Rawlings gave the press conference in her capacity as President of the December 31 Women's Movement, and the Occasion was to recall May 15, 1979 when a group of determined young men including Flt-Lt Rawlings, all from the military, attempted to rescue the nation from the bungling administration of the Supreme Military Council, an attempt which having failed, could, but for the successful coup three weeks later (June 4, 1979), have cost the young men their lives.The press conference provided Mrs Agyeman Rawlings the opportunity to review the progress of the Revolution of December 31 which was supposed to resume the rescue operation initiated five years earlier. She did not mince words about her disappointment. Not least of her worries, she said, is the performance of PNDC Secretaries.
In 1983, she recounts, the PNDC Secretaries promised visit to the villages on weekends to interact with the people: nothing of the sort happened. . .
The People's Tribunals had become indistinguishable from the traditional courts, both of them slow and incomprehensible in their procedures. The Administration has remained plagued as ever by red-tape and a bureaucratic stranglehold. While there was no forum for airing views on public affairs, the Revolution had become clique-ridden, various factions keen only to increase their influence instead of functioning as part of a team, some possibly even subverting the process. And she referred to allegations of corruption, urging the public to bring to official attention instances that may have come to notice.
The STANDARD has at various times come near to expressing similar views, but has desisted only to avoid being misunderstood. Many may recall the unpleasant consequences that befell various groups and individuals including the professionals, students and the clergy for making disagreeable comments about the Revolution; some press houses were rendered inoperative; not even members of the PNDC were immune: a couple of the original membership had to take cover, literally.
We are surprised therefore that Mrs Agyeman Rawlings could offer such criticism publicly. To be sure, growing boldness has lately been observed in other quarters also. Speaking at this year's May Day parade, "Brother" Yankey of the TUC lamented the absence of Labour-participation in national decision-making. The rank and file of the Labour Movement endorsed "Brother" Yankey's remarks, carrying all too instructive placards. What is more, eyewitness accounts have it that the PNDC Chairman's address to the May Day parade, read on his behalf by the Special Adviser, was received with less than enthusiasm.
Nor is Labour's complaint easily dismissed, if it is true, for instance, that the decision to give the P/WDCs a face- lift by redesignating them (Committee for the Defence of the Revolution) and providing for the new office of "Political Counsellor for the Economic Development of the Defence Committees" was taken above everybody's head...
Clearly all is not well with the Revolution. Assessing the situation from different perspectives, Mrs Agyeman Rawlings and "Brother" Yankey are in agreement about at least one thing, namely, that far from advancing the cause of participation, there is a retreat from this.
We commend Mrs Agyeman Rawlings for articulating so well the concerns that touch us all, though we cannot help observing that, elsewhere, so critical a public review of Government performance would be the duty of the Head of Government or Head of State, not the spouse. We commend also all those who in diverse ways have sought to draw attention to those same concerns.
And now that it is acknowledged that this Revolution too has come up against severe but by no means unfamiliar reverses, the question is pertinent: What next?
