Job creation for the youths and increased infrastructure development, make Emma Nwabuko the Abia State Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs a toast of the people. A former employee of Imo Broadcasting , he speaks on his reforms at the ministry and why Governor T.A. Orji's government is in a hurry to deliver the dividends of democracy in his last lap in office.IN your capacity as Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, what is the driving force behind your reformist advocacy'Game change is the underlying force in what is currently going on in Governor Orji's second term of proactive governance. My background in engineering with nearly three decades of working experience, has been punctuated with game plans designed for a fast track of positive designs aimed at turning around a given situation with a desired result in focus. That was what happened at the Imo Broadcasting Corporation and Schlumberger, where my track record was aligned with the league of reformist young men and women given charge to turn around a situation and with their proactive approach to corporate governance, the expected results redefined the organisations where they operated.With this mindset, many of us who also got recruited into government could not but approach issues from the private sector school. In 2009 when I was appointed Commissioner for Works and Transport, I introduced the private sector drive into the ministry ensuring the principle of accountability at all levels of job execution was the norm, with emphasis on record keeping, bringing into one focal point of supervision available road projects numbering 123 on the ground.Now as Honourable Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, a position I assumed since August 2010, the emphasis was the same, which was a vision of carrying out a crusade just like my other colleagues in the new dispensation were inclined to, working tirelessly to make a difference in the second and last lap of the Governor Theodore Orji administration.The first challenge prior to the on going reforms in the ministry was how to clear the outstanding wage bill of N2.9 billion left behind by local council chairmen whose tenure ended in January 2010. Between January and September 2010, the arrears were cleared using Heads of Service of the local councils in collaboration with the Joint Accounts and Allocation Committee (JAAC).Of course the emphasis of the new administration was on collective responsibility and that meant everybody had to be carried along with zero tolerance for divided loyalty, not after the previous chief executives left the local councils impoverished. We still suffer from their frivolous loans and severance packages to staff not funded or repaid but a difference is making the coast an easy ride. We also realised that the funds were not enough to go round not when the issues revolving on internally generated revenue had many leakages that had to be plugged if we had to produce results.Beyond these, ghost workers papered over with an over-bloated workforce milked the budget of the local councils. I received an average of N1.7 billion which peaked to N2 billion in the July/August allocation. But my big concern was that I had little left to execute this huge outlay of capital projects after paying out N1.5 billion in salaries most of which, as the days unfolded turned out to be payments made to faceless employees inclusive of local council staff, teachers, pensioners and the political class, transition chairmen and councillors with traditional rulers taking three per cent of the total allocation. This is not contending with the 725 autonomous communities created by the Orji Uzor Kalu administration, which were expected to help bring development to the state. The effect was that the ministry could neither fully meet its obligations including loans servicing nor carry out meaningful capital projects as well as fund running costs for such normal activities as refuse disposal and maintenance of peace and security within the council areas. I had no option left but to right size and downsize staff in the ministry.Was this why you contemplated using the biometric system to fight sleaze and laziness'Indeed, I had to act quickly to save the ministry from badly applying its lean budget in the wrong direction. The State House of Assembly, which has the oversight function of ensuring governance meets acceptable standards, approved a biometric system of checking staff performance and attendance to duties. A test run was carried out in January 2011 but acts of fraudulence in critical quarters, which ordinarily should have been otherwise, sabotaged the exercise and delayed the implementation. We did not give up rather than bulge and buckle.My team and I re-launched in July 2011 the biometric system and it rolled off the ground with the payment for that month; a 70 per cent staff attendance to work was placed as the cut off point, yet only 10 per cent was able to meet that mark. The mark was brought down to 50 per cent of the local councils workforce while concession was given to staff on in-service training and staff on out-station posting. Also exemptions from the log-in/log-out system were extended to state officers of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), staff on annual vacations and a category of management staff.I noticed a trend where a large number of staff of the councils was placed on mass transfers through the out-station arrangement. Apparently, this was a conduit designed to short change the system using faceless staff, who were obviously ghost workers on fictitious transfers. Traders, full time under-aged students and bank workers as well as some funny characters made the list of staff on in-service training.One council alone recorded 400 people on in-service training for a work force of 1000. In spite of the strong opposition to the biometric system, I insisted on a form of payment, which in local language is known as face-to-face payment. Even at that it became rowdy and expensive to effect without any significant gain.What other game plans did you put in place to drive your programmes through'I called a meeting of heads of service and local government management staff to evolve a workable plan that would drive the ministry forward along the line of transparency and due process. Part of that plan was to carry out unscheduled visits to the local government headquarters and certain local government institutions to find out who is at work or not and why. I also raised a team of secret service men whose mandate was to deliver to the ministry a regular feedback of what goes on where some of the reports are visual. The beneficiaries of these fraudulent arrangements thought it was going to be business as usual but have since been disappointed since their resistance to change was not bending the rules.How did you place a check on the employed especially on issues of productivity and computerisation'The local government service commission in partnership with the ministry agreed to collaborate with each other to be able to ward off this evil. That meant every staff in the local government had a computerised profile as part of a comprehensive inventory that recorded among other things, the movement of employees and progression in terms of retirement, the attendant pension schemes and payouts. This also meant that files were being modified on a daily basis. Yet it turned out that even with the embargo on unemployment, salaries, gratuity and pensions kept increasing or continued to rise on a straight-line graph. But the warning has long been made that anyone caught cheating would be dealt with since the civil service rules and regulations are clear on what constitutes a code of behaviour and the penalties for a default.What changes were effected in the Department of Monitoring and Implementation'The significant change here was re-enforcing of the activities of the monitoring and implementation department where local council chairmen come up with their proposals with the advice that such projects should at the possible earliest time be realised with an even spread on the communities that make up the councils.This approach to local council governance and their deliverables to the communities have led to improved project execution, eliminating waste in areas that were conduit pipes for leakages. Skill acquisition was one of the projects, that was used as a test run for this new policy and it turned out a huge success. Funds under the current arrangement are tied to specific projects and over time it has been possible to carry out rural electricity projects, build town halls and construct feeder roads.Given your current experience and exposure, how will you summarise the ills in local council administration in Nigeria'Local government administration, in many civilised climes, is the fulcrum of grassroots governance and infrastructure development and maintenance but these vital objectives have failed in Nigeria because priorities were either misplaced or fraudulence took the better part of those in charge. A few examples and case studies will drive home the point.Many local council administrators embark on bogus projects that are not realisable in their tenure. Currently in Abia State, Governor Orji like many of his colleagues in other states is vocal on realisable, prioritised projects, under the watchful eyes of each tier of government through the time-honoured principle of checks and balances.In addition is an agenda that calls for a work ethic that is proactive, and committed with achievable and quantifiable goals. My work ethic is in tandem with the spirit of service to the fatherland, and borrowing from President John Kennedy, ask what you can do for Abia State first before asking what Abia can do for you.In our tenure, full implementation of all salary commitments agreed upon is a priority and this includes teachers and other categories of civil servants working in this ministry. Project supervision and execution with an even spread to all the communities is a must. The idea of clustering projects in a given area is history even as we aspire to build state of the art infrastructure with our strident drive to boost our internally generated revenue (IGR).
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