Nigerian Concord Newspaper
Facts have emerged on how the governor of Benue State, Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia diverted N368bn from the allocations of the twenty three local government areas of the State in the last eighteen months.
According to Benue Anti Corruption Crusaders, an advocacy group in a press statement signed and made available to journalists by its National President, Mr. Joshua Agaigbe, each of the Benue local government chairmen only received N15million as their monthly allocation even when their allocations from the federal government range from N800million and N1.1bn monthly.
The pressure group accused Governor Hyacinth Alia of siphoning local government funds with the help of his Special Adviser at the Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.
According to the group, Governor Alia should explain why he has not been executing Local Government Autonomy in Benue state as directed by President Bola Tinubu-led administration.
“Although, the local government chairmen have been deceiving the public that there is local government autonomy in the state just to protect their job, it’s clear that what they get monthly is just N15million each” the group noted.
The group pressed further that local government chairmen in the state are only left with their Internally Generated Revenues to carry out physical projects in their respective local government areas.
The group said: “How can a local government be paid an allocation of N800million by the federal government monthly and all the Council Chairman gets is just N15million. Where does the remaining N785million per local government go to?
“And how does the Governor expect such local government chairman to perform. Right now, they are now being forced to increase their IGR so they can use same to develop their respective local government areas.
“This must be a reason the Chairman of Kwande local government, Neji was unjustly suspended by the rubber stamp members of the Benue State House of Assembly just to silence him just as he was ready to expose how local governments are being shortchanged by the state governor ”
The group however promised to make the details of its investigation on how over N368bn has been diverted from the accounts of Benue State local governments through the help of some top officials at the Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs public if the Governor fails to account for these funds within a week.
The group also called on the governor to begin to carry out Local Government Autonomy as directed by the federal government henceforth, stressing that this is the third time he would be disobeying Presidential Directives.