From Agaju Madugba, Katsina
Katsina State Governor, Dikko Umaru Radda, has described the recent Supreme Court judgment on autonomy for Local Government Councils as ill-timed, coming midway into the implementation of the 2024 budget.
With the ruling, according to Radda, “the fate of the Local Government Civil Service Commission and the Local Government Pension Board has become uncertain.”
He spoke on Wednesday at the Government House during a joint meeting with members of the State Executive Council, House of Assembly and Local Government Councils chairmen.
He regretted further that the Supreme Court judgment may not have considered the peculiar security situation of Katsina where over 20 Local Government Areas have daunting security challenges.
According to him, these challenges can only be tackled through collaborative efforts of the state government and the third tier of government.
Radda said, “our concerted efforts have reduced insecurity to the fringes of the frontline Local Governments Areas.
“We could only achieve that by jointly establishing the Katsina State Community Watch Corps. “Fighting insecurity is a monumental and resource-consuming endeavour and we must continue to fight it together regardless of the situation in individual local governments.
“Socio-economic development is holistic and as you are aware, we have various loan-based projects funded by multilateral organisations like the World Bank and we continue to seek more funding from other sources,
including the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.
“We must carefully understand the implications of this judgement on how loans will be repaid and how future Subsidiary Loan Agreements will be structured.
“We are midway through a budget cycle design, based on the previous funding arrangements.
“Given that the judgement takes immediate effect, we must understand how our 2024 budget will be affected and what measures we must take to maintain our budget objectives.
“Of great concern is how some critical arrangements for the local
government councils will be affected.
“The salaries of teachers under SUBEB, salaries of the local government workers, pensions and gratuities of local government staff, primary healthcare facilities, deductions for the emirate councils and most importantly, contributions towards security must all be addressed.
“I have asked the state Attorney- General to give me a full report on the legal implications of the Supreme Court’s decision.
“On July 4, barely two weeks ago, I called for a meeting with all 34 local government chairmen and your directors of admin and finance to present my Community Development Programme.
“As you may recall, the CDP was designed to empower local governments from the ward level
by going directly to communities to get information on their core areas of need and priorities. This was to be done by establishing a community centre in every ward, which shall host a community development office for socioeconomic development, a community support office for lives and livelihoods support to the vulnerable, and a community learning centre to advance academic and moral knowledge in our communities.
“This was to be run by a joint planning committee between the state and local governments and a programme steering committee chaired by myself that was comprised of crucial implementing ministries.
“My understanding is that all funds due to Katsina State are expended for Katsina’s benefit regardless of the mechanism.
“The narrative that local government funds are pocketed by governors as if they are not spent in line with a budget or, in the case of Katsina, with the participation of the local governments and House of Assembly needs to be reversed,” the Governor said.