The Coalition of Pro-Democracy Groups for A Better Nigeria, says the civil society organisations should be ready to put local government chairmen on their toes, following the apex court’s landmark judgement.

The national coordinator of the group, Awa Bamiji, said this in a statement on Friday in Lagos.

The Supreme Court, in a historic judgement on Thursday, ordered the federal government to immediately start direct payment of local governments’ funds to the councils’ exclusive accounts.

This is contrary to the normal practice of paying the funds to the councils through the state joint local government account.

The apex court ruled in favour of full financial autonomy for the 774 local governments.

The judgement came in a suit brought by the attorney general of the federation, following claims of inability of local governments to have access to their funds.

Mr Bamiji said that with the judgement, there had arisen a need for more checks, to prevent misplacement of priorities by some council chairmen.

He said that council chairmen must not lose focus in terms of pressing needs of the people in their individual communities.

Mr Bamiji said that council chairmen must avoid mismanagement of government resources, corruption, embezzlement and maladministration.

He said that the potential excesses of some local government chairmen should also be put to constant check by the state governors, Local Government Service Commissions as well as the anti-graft agencies.

He said that the Supreme Court’s judgement granting local government financial autonomy validated President Bola Tinubu’s desire to protect the downtrodden.

He described the apex court ruling as a step towards strengthening democracy and protecting the downtrodden at the grassroots.

Mr Bamiji said that the court remained the hope of the common man.

“This has historically brought to an end deafening and continuous noise as well as incessant protest against the interference of the State Governors by Nigerian masses led by the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE).

“If Mr President could boldly achieve this under his highly promising administration within a year, this is to tell us that he is genuinely out to protect the downtrodden,” Mr Bamiji said.

He recalled that a former chairman of Ijebu East Local Government, Wale Adedayo, was recently removed by the governor for agitating for local government autonomy while serving as chairman.

He said that with this historic judgement, Mr Adedayo and other activists had just been vindicated as ‘heroes of democracy”.

Mr Bamiji said that autonomy for local government was also part of the 2014 National Conference resolutions.

He said that the autonomy was also supported by the Nasir El- Rufai led All Progressives’ Congress (APC) 23-Member Committee on true federalism in 2017, inaugurated by the then APC national chairman,John Odigie Oyegun.

“More reforms are to follow like a generally acceptable minimum wage for workers, state police, among others,” the activist said.

(NAN)