A CLICHÉ OF DECEPTION AT BUREAU OF LGA AND CHIEFTAINCY AFFAIRS:
THE PENSIONER AND HIS WOES.
DENEN DANIEL
What perplexes and perturbs the mind of public inclination will hardly be more than a particular cliché which has come to dominate the speeches of men in charge of the affairs at the Bureau of local government and chieftaincy affairs. You unlikely will go up to two lines of these speeches without encountering phrases like, “the Advisor assured”, “the Advisor reiterate commitment”. One wonders even what exactly is the role of the role Bureau in the architecture of the state public service such that will warrant such statements of gross assurances that the Bureau is capable of up lighting the workers under the Bureau out of their penuries. Specifically, the most recent of these many speeches is one as made to the public by the personal assistant of the current Bureau Advisor, Bar. Ken, Achabo, in which the dominating phrases are those always encountered in the speeches of the past and present advisors.
The bureau of LGA and chieftaincy affairs is, inter alia, a gold pot of the state. This is made so the questionable arrangement of Joint Account. The idea of Joint Account first appeared in the 1979 constitution. The constitution drafting committee of the 1999 constitution reintroduced the clause in the current constitution. However, considering the fact that Nigeria practices a federal system of government where, in the Nigerian case, the three tiers of government are constitutionally empowered for financial autonomy, Joint Account remained a constitutional decoration until the political atmosphere in the country during the build up to the 2003 general election allowed a space through which governors in the country insisted all monies accruing to the local governments be allowed a brief stopover in the Joint Accounts. Sadly, the situation is now one which has put a strangle on the status quo of the local governments in the country and especially in the state.
Returning closer to the direction of purpose, it is important to interrogate certain claims as severally are made by advisors of the aforementioned bureau. The questions of gratuity and pension payment have become the most suitable point from which all advisors at the bureau seek to call their favorite shots. Although gratuity and pensioners are part of the budget aspect known to be for the day to day expenditures, they are distinctively known to precede, particularly a government of the particular day. For example, the Nigeria public service rule on retirement provides, exception of certain professions, two conditions which shall be meet for an individual to be said to have retired. First, an individual retires when he or she have attained thirty-five years of service or secondly, such an individual has celebrated his or her sixtieth birthday in service. After satisfying these conditions, a retired civil servant is handsomely rewarded with a lump sum of money as an appreciation of the state for his or her meritorious service. Calculative, the state or a local government as the case may be, begins preparation towards matters of payment of gratuity and pension of a future retiree on the day such is officially given a survey number. In as much as the above is not contradicting, the current situation of the local government retiree as it is always presented by “hitman” of the Joint Account arrangement is of one that lacks remedy and as well, it is one that has occurred all of a sudden and as such, it has put the Bureau off balance; only to found espousing on rhetoric, soliciting for public pity.
Interestingly , Advisors of this Bureau, whether out of instruction, instincts or better still, fallacy, are always found to be making hasty generalization. The insistence with these, is suspected to be whether the pensioner is so impoverished that he now cannot be reasonable as demanded, to deduct one from two and still know the result to be one or it is because each advisor at different tenure do lack the capacity of accessing adequate statistics for the purposes of transparency and accountability.
When the incumbent Advisor on the Bureau played host to the leaders of the Pensioners Association on the 3rd March, 2021, and as it would be later being made public by his media aide, he made vague claims on circumstances as being responsible for the woes of the pensioner. In one of them,” …he blamed the shortfall of (sic) the monthly remittances for pensions and gratuity, on the drastic dwindled allocation to the state especially within the last four months”. From the above quotation, three keys words are up for interrogation, which are: remittances, drastic and state.
By remittances, it is hard to start even on the path of imagination to understand what he S(the advisor) meant. By a way of theorizing, it is that those in charge of deductions for the purposes of pensions and gratuity do not remit same? And if yes, the next question is, whose responsibility is it to block these leakages for the purpose of the welfare of the retirees? Secondly, that Achabo could settle on the word, “drastic” demanded further explanation. What are the current statistics on the sharing formula of the federal allocation? It is just but a matter of being honest should such statistics were presented. Last on this this is when the man in charge of “local” government Bureau could not remember that his preference must be to the local government and not the state. by so doing, it meant and still means that his preference lies with the state government at the expense of the local government and whatever he does is a disguise of a conduit pipe for the insatiable appetite of the state at milking dry, the financial udders of the 23 local governments of the state.
When mostly, in 2015 and 2016 when huge monies accrued into the state from bailout packages and the Paris Club Refund, the Bureau rose to prominence and quickly, subsequent events such as the death and burial of the Tor Tiv IV, the coronation of the Tor Tiv V and the infamous local government screening have put the bureau at logger head with the public and to an average local government civil servant, the bureau is nothing but a cave of bullions for the state government. To perpetuate it holds on the finances of the local government unchallenged, whoever is appointed to man the affairs must undergo proper indoctrination on how to have mastery of deceptive clichés. The aim no doubt, is to deflect and confuse the minds of the local government staff; both serving and retired.
Like in the colonial Indian town of Sialpore, who occupies the Bureau as an advisor and when one does same have become a point of multifaceted political scheming. It goes beyond a mere dinner table of party largesse. As a melting of all revenues accruing into the state from the federal and the fact that Benue State relies heavily on federal allocation, a governor can never hazard on appointing someone whose knowledge and loyalty is by proxy. In the current political dispensation and the fact that all Advisors at the Bureau at different time are kinsmen of the First Lady speaks more about the shrewd considerations that are given when it comes to appointing one into the office of the Advisor to the Governor on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.
