By Sir Ralph Okhiria
As the tenure of chairmen of the 18 local government councils in Edo State expires on Friday, March 5, 2021, the Heads of Service (HOS) in the various councils are being prepared to take over administration of the council areas.
Recall that the present crop of elected chairmen of the local government councils in the state were sworn-in by Governor Godwin Obaseki on March 5, 2018.
The RELIANCE investigation revealed that the inability of the state government to conduct fresh election into the local government councils necessitated the deployment of the HOS to run the affairs of the councils.
A prominent leader of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state revealed that the Obaseki-led administration was unable to hold the election because of three major reasons.
“Top on the list is the inability of the totality of the members of the PDP to fully integrate and unite. As things are presently in the party, there are two factions. Those members that moved into the party with Governor Obaseki are yet to come to terms with the old PDP members.
“In fact they want to hijack the party and those they met on ground are not in any way shifting ground. Thus the members are like behaving like cats and dogs with serious friction which the governor and we’ll meaning party leaders are battling hard to resolve.
“Although the governor would have loved to go ahead with the local government election but wise men in the party advised him against such political action.
“You know you can’t trust politicians especially those that are agitated for one reason or the other. Such politicians can easily play the role of spoilers and by so doing bring the party to its knees and cause it to experience embarrassing defeat.
“Because of this, the governor quickly beat a retreat and put the election on hold for at least three months. It is expected that the three months of grace will be enough for him to put his house in order, otherwise there will be a major crisis within the PDP.
“It’s no longer news that PDP was out of power for almost 12 years and with that any right thinking person should know that the members especially the old PDP members will be very anxious to taste political power at any level. So, the party members are not smiling that the LG elections are not held and the delay to constitute the state executive council and other political appointments.
“Another reason is that the state is weak financially at the moment and election takes so much money to conduct which if held will definitely cripple the financial status of the state. This problem is not peculiar to Edo State. It cuts across the entire 36 states of the country. All the states, as well as the federal government are struggling to stay afloat financially.
“Hardliners in the PDP had wanted the setting up of caretaker committees to succeed the outgoing local government council chairmen. But to do so is to engage in constitutional illegality which the governor and other serious minded party leaders outrightly rejected.
“Lastly, Governor Obaseki is highly interested in turning around the financial fortunes of the local government by appointing HOS to help save the much needed financial resources for development and service delivery. It’s obvious that some of the councils as at the moment cannot pay salary not to talk of embarking on developmental activities.
“So the HOS being civil servants will definitely not be weighed down with the burden of meeting up with heavy financial needs like taking care of political functionaries which are very many in number.
“So by next week, an announcement expectedly will be made by government to herald the taking over of affairs of the councils by the HOS”, the politician who would not want his name in print, stated.
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