By Emmanuel Unah
CALABAR—WHEN Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State swore in the current set of local government chairmen in the state on December 19, 2013, he sounded a note of warning that being the closest persons to the people at the grassroots, they should make it a point of duty to reside within their areas of authority.
According to him, past experience showed that more often than not, local government chairmen and their political appointees hardly stayed within their council areas, not to talk of reporting to their offices regularly, an attitude he said was very undesirable.
Recalcitrant chairs
Perhaps, because the governor did not spell out any possible sanction that would be meted on defaulting chairmen, the instruction fell on deaf ears, as most, if not all the council chairmen, are flagrantly disobeying the directive.
The chairmen, who were either top civil servants or entrepreneurs before they were drafted by the PDP, to which they all belong, to take charge of the councils, have their homes in Calabar, where they reside.
Going by the tortuous topography and bad roads that stretch several hundreds of kilometres, chairmen superintending over councils that are over 300 to 400 kilometers away, operate from Calabar.
Ogoja, Bekwara, Obudu, Obanlikwu and Yala are some 400 kilometers away from Calabar, while places like Obubra, Ikom, Etung and Boki are about 300 hundred kilometres from the state capital.
A few hours in office
Niger Delta Voice investigations revealed that the only time most chairmen are found in their offices is the week they collected their monthly allocation and came to disburse the funds. To oversee the successful disbursement, they report in their offices and do the paper work and this lasts for just a few hours.
Once disbursement was completed, they returned to their homes in Calabar. So on the whole, what the average council chairman spends in office is below twenty hours in a month.
Recently, there was an armed robbery incident in the far- flung Obanlikwu Local Government Area, which houses the Obudu Ranch Resort.
When the council chairman was contacted by Niger Delta Voice to find out if he had details of the incident, he said he was in Calabar. In his absence, the youth barricaded roads, torched a police station and chased policemen into the bush.
Workers emulate bosses
With the persistent absence of council chairmen in their areas of jurisdiction, most council staff hardly report for duty and those who care to go there only do so when it is convenient and leave when they wish without anyone to query their nonchalant attitude to work.
When Niger Delta Voice went round some of the council areas, apart from principal staff of the councils like Director of Works, Head of Local Government Administration and a few other subordinates, most of the councils are empty.
Presently, the roads leading to Ogoja council headquarters are very bad and nothing in the form of remedial action is being undertaken by the council chairman to redress the terrible state of the roads and this is due largely to her absence from Ogoja.
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