Port Harcourt Mayor, Chimbiko Akarolo, has given an assurance that Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, will not remove elected council chairmen, as being feared by the All Progressives Congress (APC).
APC lost Rivers to Wike’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the governorship vote on April 11.
“I have worked with the man we all are expecting (Wike). He was a LG Chairman and also one time President of ALGON (Association of Local Governments of Nigeria), he knows the local government system and its workings.
”As one man who always stood by the LG, he will not tamper with the LG, quote me. He has been there and grew from there, passed through the process with enormous experience.
“Anyone who attempts to destroy the system that threw him up will shoot himself in the foot, and no one will take him serious,” Akarolo, who won election for a second term on the platform of the APC, said.
Wike had disclosed at a public lecture by Professor Kimse Okoko to presage his swearing-in that the council election conducted by former Governor Rotimi Amaechi violated a court order and disregarded electoral guidelines.
Wike insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not release the voters’ register to the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) which further questions the propriety of the council election.
Speaking on council administration, Akarolo blamed the inability of local governments to successfully negotiate for their autonomy at the national conference last year, which would have been incorporated into the Constitution amendment.
He said most councils nationwide are being run by caretaker committees whose heads could not attend ALGON meetings and did not have the capacity to represent the association at the confab.
Akarolo lamented that “they designed the system in such a way that we don’t succeed. By the time the governors mobilised themselves for the conference, how many states had elected LGs? How many elected council chairmen have attended ALGON meetings?”
He said only about 11 of the 36 states and Abuja have elected chairmen, which made it possible for governors to mobilise against council autonomy at the confab.
”There are states running for two or three years without conducting LG elections, which is not conducive for effective local government administration.
”The experience of 1999 when ALGON was powerful taught them a lesson, so there is this tendency to say, ‘we will not empower ALGON, leave them’. That is the reason some states are reluctant to conduct council elections.”
