Jason Obinna
Former Minister of Health, Olorunnimbe Mamora, has asserted that governors played a significant role in undermining local government administration in Nigeria by imposing caretaker chairmen on the people at the grassroots.
In an interview on Channels Television on Friday, Mamora candidly expressed his opinion, highlighting the governors’ role in the decline of local government functionality. He recalled his active involvement in the matter, noting that local government chairmen were initially elected in 1998 with a three-year tenure that should have concluded in 2001.
Mamora stated, “If I would be very frank, the governors destroyed the local governments. That’s the truth. Don’t forget, I was very much involved.”
He further explained that during the termination of the chairmen’s tenure, the Local Government chairmen, under the aegis of ALGON, approached the National Assembly. They sought an extension of their tenure to four years, aligning it with the state and federal levels.
Mamora, who was the chairman of the Conference of Speakers of State Houses of Assembly in 2001, highlighted the constitutional challenge in Section 7, which places local government affairs under state jurisdiction. “We challenged it because it was like trying to usurp the powers of the state houses of assembly,” he added.
The National Assembly proceeded with the bill to extend the tenure of local government chairmen to four years, leading Mamora and his fellow speakers to challenge it in court. The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that the National Assembly had no authority to determine the tenure.
Mamora recounted, “Then President Olusegun Obasanjo invited us speakers to the Villa and appealed to us because their tenure was about to end and new local government chairmen were yet to be elected.”
