Leadnaija
Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, has berated state governors, accusing them of idleness and over-dependence on federal allocations.
Speaking during an interview with news men on Friday, Agbakoba said the 36 state governors across Nigeria “don’t do anything” and only rely on monthly handouts from the federal government.
He said: “The 774 local governments, the 36 state governors, don’t do anything. All they do is go to Abuja and collect a stipend every month.”
Agbakoba, a senior advocate and human rights lawyer, urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take deliberate steps toward devolving political authority to other tiers of government.
According to him, decentralizing power will allow for bottom-up development and ensure that citizens actually feel the dividends of democracy.
He noted that millions of Nigerians are depending on Tinubu’s government to succeed and stressed the need for a radical change in the governance structure.
“I would always want any Nigerian president to succeed because the people who are going to benefit from a successful president are far too many,” Agbakoba said.
“There are 250 million Nigerians hoping for a good government. So I can only wish that the President would do far more than he has done in trying to give Nigeria a sense of direction, a sense of development.”
The legal icon maintained that without devolving power, governors would remain ineffective, and Nigeria’s progress would continue to stall.
