The Secretary to the Kwara State Government (SSG), Alhaji Sola Gold, yesterday denied his government's involvement in the deduction of allocations of funds to the existing 16 Local Government Areas (LGA) of the state.

This came five days after Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed made a similar denial.

But another twist was added to the development when the chairman of the state's chapter of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria, (ALGON), Adebayo Ishola, dissociated ALGON from the recent strike notice given by the officials of ALGON over the non-payment of two months salaries (June and July) to their members.

Besides, more reasons were supplied for the recent slump in the financial status of the local councils.

Sources told The Guardian that Ahmed criticised the councils' chairmen at a meeting at the Government House over their alleged ineptitude in office.

Besides, Ahmed was quoted to have reprimanded some of them for allegedly borrowing money from unauthorised local money lenders "with outrageous interest rate of 60 per cent." An extant aspect of the local government rules stipulates that no council should borrow any money beyond N1 million without the authorisation of the Bureau of Local Council.

Our source added: "The governor was visibly angry at the parley with the chairmen, liaison officers and four of the special advisers to the governor. Ahmed said their lazy attitude to work was having negative impact on his administration.

"He warned some of them fond of leaving their respective councils' headquarters for weekends in Ilorin with profligacy tendencies to halt the trend or face the wrath of law. In fact from the look of things, he may likely dissolve them before the end of this year if they fail to turn a new leaf," added the source.

However, at the press briefing in Ilorin, the SSG in company of some top government officials like the state Commissioner for Finance, Demola Baanu and his Information counterpart, Tunji Morounfoye, said the state government was not "on the neck of the LGAs."

"The recent threat by the NULGE to embark on strike over non-payment of two months' salaries was unfortunate. Even though the threat notice had been withdrawn and the salaries paid, the governor had to hold a meeting with all the councils' chairmen apart from that of Offa, the Liaison Officers and some NULGE executives. The meeting lasted for about five hours. The truth of the matter is that the state government is not on the neck of the LGAs and it is not taking money from them as being speculated," he said.

Ishola said: "ALGON as a body had not alleged that the state government sits on local government money. If NULGE had said that, we did not send them. We fund projects backed by law. The challenge that we have is that there has been a drastic shortfall thereby making it difficult to execute most of the projects we used to execute."

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