Hon Ola Animashaun, the former Ikorodu Constituency I representative in the Lagos State House of Assembly and now a chieftain of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has indicted state governors in Nigeria as the reason there is so much under-development in the country.
Animashuan said this during a courtesy call to his office on Ibeshe Road, Ikorodu by members of League of Journalists, Ikorodu recently.
Hon. Animashaun while examining governance especially at the grassroot level and the role of the media said that state governors in virtually all the states in Nigeria are guilty of not allowing local government system to function the way it ought to whereby preventing development in the Federation.
“If the governors had allowed the local government to function the way it should, I believe Nigeria would have advanced more and governance would have been about people in the grassroots. If the required funds are allowed to get to the local government, the people would have cultivated the habit of calling their council chairmen and other elected officials to account because they don’t have immunity like the governors and they are very well known to the people”, Hon. Animashaun said.
He also deplored the peoples attitude of putting all the blames and
condemnations on the federal government whereas neglecting the state and local government both which get 48% of the allocation from the federation every month. “Why should we keep complaining about the federal government when we are talking about water, road, education and every other thing? Why is nobody asking the state and local government that is getting 48%, while federal government gets 52% of the federation allocation every month?”
Buttressing his point on the failure of local government system in the grassroot, Hon. Animashaun deplored a situation where the system is so handicapped that it cannot embark on any project, “Why I will not want to totally condemn the local government especially in Ikorodu, but I think the creation of additional five local council development areas should have brought more development, but what we are seeing is the reverse. While we are growing up, most inner roads in Ikorodu were constructed by local government, but today that is no more.”
While imploring league members to be professional in their duties, Hon. Animashaun asked them to help the grassroots by reporting
areas where the people are being neglected in a constructive manner, ‘What has doing your job professionally got to do with partisanship? Your repertoire should help in bringing about development. If in 1999, only Maya Primary School, Ikorodu was serving the entire Maya up to Itamaga and surrounding areas and in 2014. It is still the only public primary school serving these areas which has expanded drastically, what happens to children of those areas whose parents do not have money to send them to private schools or pay-as-you-go schools? What does that have to do with APC or PDP? It should be about people; development and such should concern members of the press
While appreciating the role media have played in societal development, Hon. Animashuan also enjoined the league members to continue playing theirs role as watch dogs effectively and pledged his total support for the activities of the League of Journalists, Ikorodu.