By Umar Akilu Majeri, Dutse
The Jigawa state Government has approved the released of over 1.8billion naira for construction of a permanent structure for local government chairmen across the 27 local government areas in the state. Information available to 247ureports.com indicates that the release of the N1.8billion may have been carried out against the dictates of the financial laws governing the management of public resources. The N1.8billion is said to have been released for the erection of befitting homes for the LGA Chairmen. But the state commissioner for local government, Salisu Sale Indirawa denied that such sum was released for the said purpose.
The commissioner defended the allegation leveled against his ministry of illegally awarding local government council’s boss permanent structure in all the 27 local governments’ areas in the state. He called it a false allegation. In his words, “we are not awarding any contract for any local council, we are supervising the services and operation of the local government council as guided by the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria“.
The commissioner maintained that “it is every one’s knowledge that local government councils in Jigawa state are autonomous, they are operating independently without state government interference as provided in the constitution“. This, he stated while admitting that, “yes it is true that, each local government council is constructing chairman’s official resident in their respecting local government area, to the best of my knowledge all due process had been followed by every local council before the contract was awarded”
Honourable Indirawa maintained that each local government council chairman awarded the contract at his on level, which already proposed and approved in this year budget of each local council, “so what is illegal about this?”.
He therefore called on the people to ignore any rumor speculation because he considers it as baseless criticism.
