Vatsa Urges President Tinubu to Stop Releasing Excess Money to State Governors

By YM Bina

A Chieftain of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) in Niger state and former commissioner for information, culture and tourism, Mr Jonathan Tsado Vatsa has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to stop releasing excess money to state governors whom he accused of mismanagement, misappropriation of those public funds.

He made the disclosure in a statement issued in Minna, urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to emulate late General Abacha, former president Jonathan who channeled subsidy funds to genuine development sectors in the country.

Vatsa said Nigerians are currently going through hard times not because there are no money in the system but due to some Nigerian governors behaved very irresponsible with a number of misplaced priorities for selfish interests.

“These are agents of underdevelopment, the President should stop giving them excess money because the people don’t feel the subsidy removal impacts”, Vatsa declared.

Vatsa who was reacting to the statement credited to President Tinubu that state governors should stop building flyovers where there are less vehicles traffic and channel such resources to genuine infrastructural development, pointed out that the construction of most of these flyovers are mere conduits pipe for the governors.

It could be ecalled that Niger state is among the states currently embarking on the construction of flyovers and has not been able to complete one since they were started three years ago.
Five flyovers are currently under construction in Minna the state capital alone.

Similarly, the former publicity secretary of the party in the state said from the tune of President Tinubu statement, it shows that he is aware that the governors are the biggest problem of his administration and the party.

According to him, while the governors smile home with huge amounts from the federation account every month, five times more than their predecessors, there is nothing to show in most of these states with poverty ravaging the people.

The former commissioner believes that the resistance and backlash this administration is experiencing today from Nigerians due to the hardship in the country is caused by some of these governors who have personalized governance.

The APC Chieftain revealed that ordinarily no state governor should approach any bank or lenders for loan, going by the enormous resources coming from the federation account which many of them have publicity acknowledged, but regretted that some of these governors have plunged their state into unpayable loans.

He maintained that the governors hide under the construction of “unfinished flyovers” even in state where you have less than 200 vehicles on the road just to pile up loans for their state.

The former commissioner further urged President Tinubu to enforce the supreme court judgement on local government autonomy, stressing that “the situation at the local government level is better imagined than experienced”.

He claimed that majority of the governors have continue to hijack local government allocations to the detriment of the people at the third tier of government, saying that “lack of autonomy for the local governments has crippled their activities and rendered them incapacitated to fight insecurity.

“Their resources are in the hands of the governors. They (local governments) get less than 10 percent of their allocation”, he concluded.