Oyi: Worst Local Government Area In Anambra State

CHUMA-ODILI HARRIS, Ph.D

As the unpopular Caretaker Committee chairmanship policy of the Anambra State Government continues to ill-administer the affairs of Local Government Council areas, tongues have began to wag. 

The unnecessarily prolonged tenure of the Caretaker Committee Chairmen in 21Local Government Areas of Anambra State, South Eastern Nigeria, has been adjudged to be most callous, insensitive and counter productive in the state; some of them have reasons to explain why they are performing abysmally poor. 

According to Anambra Pro-Democracy Movement, APDM findings, while some of the Local Governments have been indicted in different reports including a report of a section of the media as well as the civil rights groups, others spent time battling with the meddlesome attitude of masked State Government officials in their Councils over allegations of fraud, corruption and gross mismanagement of Council funds.

Concerning the performance of the Councils, the Anambra Pro-Democracy Movement, APDM, after painstaking investigations on Public Finance for Local Governments, is set to make public its report for mass scrutiny and review. It is hoped that the 2019/2020 report of the APDM in relation to the Local Government Councils’ capital expenditure when released, would spur the State House of Assembly to extend invitation to the indicted LGAs, to explain grey areas concerning their Councils.

In the APDM reports 2019/2020, some of these Councils had been indicted in various aspects, which exposed corruption in the Local Government system in the state and described how reckless some of the Council officials are.
Prominent among the Councils indicted for squandering millions of Naira on controversial spendings included Oyi Local Government with high rising debts, and being unable to meet the internally generated revenue targets of the Council. 

According to the report for the year under review, Oyi Local Government Council engaged in spurious financial spendings amounting to millions of Naira in deductions from fictitious contracts, ghosts workers hanging on the neck of the Council among sundry expenditures unaccounted for.

In Oyi Local Government Area, residents told APDM that it is difficult to believe they have a Council area because of the level of degradation in the LGA.
“Our roads are all bad, most healthcare centres are Ill-equipped, everywhere is dirty, the markets and garages are dump sites for wastes. We are the dirtiest Local Government, and our people are daily dying of malaria, cholera and strange diseases largely due to dirty environments. We have had an administration headed by Engr. Nnamdi Nwadiogbu for over 3 years now, yet we have not seen much from the Council. What we have witnessed so far are interventions by the rich and philanthropists, highly spirited individuals in our communities; we grade our roads by ourselves, Government is far away from here. There’s no government presence here” Emeka Anene, a resident in the area told APDM crew.

In Oyi, the interconnecting roads leading to various towns and communities are death traps, Ogbunike, Nteje, and Umunya, are among the worst roads in the area visited by our crew. At Ogbunike, there are many abandoned road construction sites with heaps of sand on Umueri/Ifite/Osile via Town Hall Road, which the residents said were poured on the roads for over one year with a promise that the Government officials were coming to grade the road.

When contacted, an Oyi LGA official, who pleaded anonymity, said contrary to such claims, his Boss, Engr. Nnamdi Nwadiogbu’s administration had done a lot. “My brother, this is just an LGA and whatever we get as allocation is from what gets to Oyi Local Government Area from the Willie Obiano’s Government. My boss is regrettably incapacitated, he doesn’t even know what is accrued to Oyi LGA from Federal allocations. His job description is simple, whatever the Governor said is what he does. Nwadiogbu cannot initiate a road rehabilitation project. He cannot even approach the Governor with such a proposal to embark on roads rehabilitation, he will be sacked instantly. Do you know that Nwadiogbu uses his personal money to grade some roads? The library project he started at the Secretariat here has been suspended because he did not obtain consent and approval from the Governor. If anybody is complaining that we have not done enough, what about the ones we did in conjunction with the State Government?” he asked.

At Umunya, the story was the same with many residents raising concern that the administration had left them worse than it met them. “We only see our Local Government Chairman on Facebook and Instagram attending burial ceremonies. Our roads are seriously in bad shape. Many of the roads have become impassable. It is so bad. Even where projects are executed, the cost of such projects are exorbitant that they become unbelievable,” one of the residents told APDM Crew.