The Kaduna State Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, Alhaji Shehu Muhammad, has urged councils chairmen in the state to be creative to improve revenue generation for grassroots development.
Muhammad gave the advice at a one-day Public Policy Dialogue with theme “Strengthening Local Government Fiscal Sustainability and Service Delivery in Kaduna State,” held on Thursday in Kaduna.
The dialogue was organised by the Local Government Accountability Mechanism (LGAM) in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government Affairs and Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL).
Muhammad described the revenue generation profile of the local governments in Kaduna as ‘disheartening’, saying they could hardly raise up to 50 per cent of the expected revenue in 2021.
“This makes the local governments perpetually depend on the federation account to survive which is very dangerous and unproductive as far as grassroots development is concerned.
“The key to proving leadership capability is changing the revenue profile for the betterment of the grassroots; you can’t do any project without resources.
“No consultant can help you raise the revenue profile in your LGAs, you have to do it yourself. You all went round during campaign, so you know your terrains and so should come up with ideas to tackle the challenges.
“The challenges were the key issues you were questioned and examined on when you applied for the local government chairmanship seat in your respective LGAs,” he said.
Muhammad said community participation in governance was also key to achieving successes in local government administration.
According to him, meaningful contributions and comments could come from town hall meetings which could be considered and further serve as solutions to some of the challenges.
The Chairman of Kaduna State Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Mr Murtala Dabo, expressed regrets that only few LGAs could survive without allocations.
He pledged the commission’s commitment towards ensuring remittance of the revenue collected to the local councils.
“The revenues generated are small so the chairmen must also device means of raising their revenues,” he said.
Earlier, the Leader of LGAM Secretariat, Mr Yusuf Goje, said that the meeting was to brainstorm on new strategies toward improving revenue collection in LGAs.
“In a forum like this, new ways, strategies and challenges are discussed to provide LGAs with more funds to carry out projects identified by the citizens,” he said.
Mr Abubakar Buba, the Chairman of Lere LG, on behalf of the chairmen, said they were working hard to fulfill their campaign promises even amidst scarce resources.
Represented by Haruna Kargi, one of his councillors, Buba said that the local government chairmen had keyed into open government participation with their communities in areas of implementation, evaluation, monitoring and reporting.
He said that the communities were taking over ownership of projects and facilities at the various LGAs towards ensuring maximum use and maintenance.
