19th March, 2013
The chairman of Kosofe Local Government Area, Lagos state, Southwest Nigeria, Babatunde Sofola, in this interview with EROMOSELE EBHOMELE, says the impression Nigerians have of council chairmen is justified
You were one of the council chairmen recently commended by the state Assembly Committee on Local Government Administration. How has it affected you?
I’m very happy that I was commended by members of the House Committee on Local Government Administration and Chieftaincy Affairs. I thank the members for the commendation, but sincerely, rather than make me happy, the commendation has brought more fear. I’m seriously scared because when one is commended, one is being told to do more. Now all I think about is how to surmount what they met on ground so that when they visit again, the commendation would be double.
How would you describe your experience so far as a council chairman for almost one year now?
It’s been full of ups and downs. At inception, I realised that there was need to do a lot of re-engineering. The IGR which is supposed to assist in the development of my local government was in a very bad state; where you discover that a lot of our staff were taking what should have been paid into the pocket of the local government.
So we have been doing a lot of re-engineering and I can say confidently that today, we are now beginning to witness a larger amount of money coming in. Before, it used to be hand-in-hand cash transactions, but now we insist on e-payment and we do follow up. We also do reconciliation on what we have in the banks and that has to a larger extent reduced the level of thievery and fraudulent activities.
I am not saying we don’t have fraud, there is still a lot of fraud, but we have to reverse that trend.
On assumption of office, I also realised that our youths had never witnessed empowerment and you know youths are burning with power and if you do not channel such energy positively, it will work against you. We are now putting them in vocational centres. We will be doing our one year in office in few days; we are going to empower those that are qualified; those that have finished their vocational studies. For instance, those that have done fashion designing, we will on that day give them sewing machines, so also those that have done other vocational studies. We also intend to empower them with vehicles, buses that will be used to generate funds. These will distributed among the seven wards we have in this local government.
Are these the only areas you have made your mark?
No of course! Realising that education is very important and any nation that neglects education is doing a great disservice not just to itself, but also to the people, we immediately moved to change all the blackboards in all our schools. Today if you go to all the schools in Kosofe Local Government, they all have the white marker boards and we supply them with the marker every month. We realise that this marker board make education easier and friendly, children learn easily with it and the teachers also find it easier to teach the pupils, not to talk of the health implications that comes with using the chalk, because it has been found that these chalks we use can cause cancer. We have also provided school bus, which takes children to and from their various schools and parents have been able to relax on funding their children’s transportation to school and back.
We have also discovered that some of our pupils roam about the streets during holidays, so we introduced summer schools where we train them. And it has paid off because their results have started to improve, unlike before when a lot of them failed examinations. Education is the best legacy you can give a child, which no one can steal from him. So it is one area we don’t joke with.
Similarly, there were challenges at our health centres, there were no drugs and we didn’t have the necessary personnel. So we had to first renovate a lot of them because they were nothing to write home about. You are aware Governor Babatunde Fashola has laid a lot of emphasis on healthcare in the state and we have also taken a cue from that. We have improved our health centres, we now have generators and inverters there; we have the pre-requisite staff. Though we still need more; at least, we have improved on what we met on ground.
We have been able to provide accommodation for our doctors so that we can have resident doctors and we are able to operate 24/7 at Ogudu Health Centre now. We have renovated Mende Health Centre, Oworo Health Centre, and we hope that this drugs revolving scheme is fully operational in Kosofe Local Government. I make bold to state that our local government was the first to fulfill conditions attached to starting the drugs revolving scheme. Why must somebody go to the General Hospital just because he has typhoid? Or just because you want to deliver a baby, you now drive down to the General Hospital, when right there at your doorstep, a health centre should be properly equipped to take delivery of such children. We are already taking so many deliveries at our health centres and have been able to surmount the challenges we had.
When we came into government, we had flooding everywhere. Once it rains a little, everywhere was flooded. Today I can make bold to say that we have done what I will consider a major clearing of drains. The last time it was done the way we have done it was when Lateef Jakande was the state governor. We did not just take a broom to sweep the surface, we opened up the drains. A lot of the dirt inside had become rocks, we had to break and remove them, because this is what stops water from flowing. We have educated our people on the danger of throwing refuse into the drains because it goes to block the canals. We have facilitated the clearing of canals by the state government too, since the local governments don’t have the power to clear canals.
Of course, we would have loved to do much more than we have done till date, but as you know, paucity of funds is a major issue. We are trying the best we can to also do some roads and rehabilitate others just as we are rehabilitating schools and health centres.
Before I decided to become the chairman of this local government, I knew I would have to make a lot of sacrifices because local government is where you have the biggest of problems and challenges and it cannot be compared to any other tier of government.
What is your position on local government autonomy?
If we have more funds at the local government level, we will do more for the grassroots. If I could remember, there is a bill at the Senate which has reached its third reading; the bill is on local government autonomy. The fear within a lot of people is that if so much money is released to the local governments, the chairmen would not be able to handle it.
People are also asking if this would not encourage fraud. But I laugh because in local government system, we have checks and balances on fraud and fraudulent people. We have what you call the Public Account Committee of the House of Assembly and every quarter, they review all our transactions. You have to defend what you have been using your money for, you take all your papers and documents there and they look at them, if they find where fraud has been committed, they pick it out.
Apart from that, we have a Committee on Local Government Administration which is saddled with investigating and monitoring what we are doing at the local government level. We also have external auditors from the state government; they go through our files and give queries where queries need to be given. So a man that wants to steal had better be very ready to steal. It is not easy to steal such money. Those that are saying money that will be given to them from autonomy will be mismanaged, I don’t think it is good enough. We have had opportunity to travel abroad and we’ve seen the system of government being practised out there.
They also have local governments in the United States of America. We practise the presidential system of government and the system of government is an expensive one, but it is workable. We went and we saw what they were doing out there. They call themselves counties and we call ourselves local government. We call ourselves Executive Chairmen and they call themselves Mayors and the system of governance there should be commended, because there is freedom to operate. The amount of funds that is made available to local government there is very comfortable.
I am in support of local government autonomy because I believe it will enable local government chairmen to work effectively and do more for their respective communities.
How have you been able to manage your internally generated revenue?
I will not tell you all that I have been doing in order to curtail leaks in the generation of revenue, but we hold revenue meetings once a week, which from time to time, I also attend. At these meetings, we want to know what was collected the week before, why there is a reduction or an increase. All these keep our staff on their toes. We introduced incentives. In this case, where the staff have been able to generate beyond their targets, we encourage them to make them more active.
When I got here, there were no awards for staff; I introduced an award for staff of the month and staff of the year. All these have helped in the area of IGR. We also go to our Community Development Associations (CDAs) and Community Development Committees (CDCs) appealing to members of the community to pay their tax. We made them understand the reasons why they must pay their tax, and that if they do not pay, there was no way we will be able to ensure development. I will not discuss the other things we do to block loopholes for now because that is my own joker.
Nigerians are complaining that the local government system is too distant from them…
In reacting to that, I will say a journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. Some of those that are saying this are correct in a lot of cases. I can say their anger is justified, because we have a lot of communities where the presence of local government has not been felt and we need to be frank with ourselves. A local government cannot reach all the nooks and crannies because you are limited by funds.
But with good administration, you can start holding meetings with the CDAs and CDCs in various communities to know what their problems are; know the ones you can solve and those you cannot solve. Let your presence be felt. It is not so much a matter of tarring a road, when especially the cost implication is too high. You are talking of about N20-50 million to grade a road, tar it and do the drainage, it is not a small amount of money when you consider what we collect. If you collect a lot, then you can do a lot of roads. Where you are limited by the amount of fund you receive, then you look for the area where you can spend small amounts of money and reach each community.
If it is borehole, provide it for all the communities, choose roads that are not too wide and long that you can grade and put latarite on them and ensure the rains cannot wash off these roads, then when you have money, you can put asphalt. We bought a roller in this local government and whenever we discover any pot hole, we quickly go there with our roller and block it before it becomes too wide and the cost implication higher.
Briefly tell us how your journey into politics began?
My political experience began with being a ward chairman in Kosofe Local Government and this is about 45 years ago. And during that period, I became very familiar with most of the problems that have to do with the community. Thereafter, I went into the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board where I was a permanent board member for five and a half years; it was also a political appointment.
The two appointments I had gave me the necessary tools with which to work and my appointment at the board was renewed for another five years, but I decided to resign so that I could assist a larger number of people. With grassroots politics, if you want to assist a larger number of people, you don’t do it from the board; you do it from the local government.
The yearning and aspirations of the people are enormous and anyone that says we don’t have problems in this country, especially at the grassroots, is not being sincere. It is because of my desire to contribute a little to solving problems of the masses that made me go into the election for local government and by the grace of God, I was fortunate enough to get there.