The trip by the wives of the chairmen of the 21 local government areas in Adamawa State to Turkey, for a leadership training programme when they do not hold leadership positions in government was obviously an act of insensitivity to the plight of the people of the state, which hosts the poorest people in the North-east, Ejiofor Alike writes
The World Bank had in a report identified Adamawa State as the most poverty-stricken in the insurgency-ravaged North-east.
In a report titled: ‘The Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Development for Peace,’ the bank had put the poverty rate in most states of the North-east at 70 per cent.
The report had revealed that the North-east and other regions around Lake Chad were plagued by a high poverty rate, low human capital, and poor access to basic services.
“Communities in the vicinity of the lake are lagging compared with the socio-economic standards in other parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, which are already underperforming compared with other developing economies worldwide.
“For instance, in Nigeria’s North-east, which flanks the lake to the south-west, poverty rates are estimated at over 70 per cent, almost double the rate in the rest of the country,” the 2021 World Bank report had stated.
According to the report, poverty rates in Adamawa and Yobe states were as high as 74 per cent and 70 per cent respectively
“In Nigeria, the poverty rate in the Lake Chad region (72 per cent) is nearly twice as high as the rate in the rest of the country (38 per cent); part of this spatial gap is likely explained by the devastating impact of the Boko Haram conflict in Nigeria’s North-east.
“Poverty is most prevalent in the parts of the Lake Chad region that lie within Nigeria. The poverty rates in Adamawa and Yobe states reach as high as 74 per cent and 70 per cent, significantly higher than the national average of 38 per cent,” the report added.
The report noted that due to the activities of the Boko Haram terrorists in the region, about 2.7 million people had been displaced and 12.8 million people needed humanitarian assistance, with North-east Nigeria badly affected.
“Of the 12.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, 10.6 million are in the three most highly affected states, Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe, in Nigeria’s North-east.”
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had also in its 2019 multidimensional poverty report, identified the state as Nigeria’s fifth poorest state with a poverty rate of 75.41 per cent.
The political leaders of a state with such an abysmal record of hosting the poorest people in Nigeria should be concerned about how to lift the people out of poverty.
Surprisingly, a recent development suggests that the political leaders at the grassroots in the state do not appreciate the seriousness of the poverty crisis.
The misplaced priorities of the chairmen of the 21 local government areas (LGAs) in the state manifested in their recent decision to expend public resources in sponsoring their wives on a leadership training programme in Istanbul, Turkey, when the Nigerian Constitution does not provide any leadership roles for wives of LG chairmen.
The 21 wives, along with some senior officials of the State Ministry of Local Government, reportedly attended a leadership training programme in Turkey, a move that sparked outrage among members of the public, who described it as wasteful and insensitive.
But the Chairman of Toungo LGA and state chairman of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), Suleiman Toungo, defended the trip.
Toungo said the training was designed to equip their spouses with leadership skills.
He noted that council chairmen themselves had benefited from similar overseas training two months earlier.
The LG boss added that since the chairmen had undergone training themselves, their wives also needed similar exposure to help them “offer useful advice on governance”.
“We did our training two months ago; so, I do not see anything wrong in our wives going for training outside the country. They are our wives and we need their advice. We are looking at the importance of training them on leadership, not the cost,” he said.
However, a serving council chairman from the northern part of the state, reportedly distanced himself from the trip, saying he was not consulted before his wife’s name was shortlisted.
“I was sleeping when I got a call from one of the ALGON officials asking me to send my wife’s details for a visa. That was the first time I heard of such a project. This is simply an abuse of public funds,” he was quoted as saying in a media report.
Some stakeholders within and outside the state have criticised the chairmen for spending huge sums of money on the leadership training.
Reacting in a post on X, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections, Mr. Peter Obi described the trip as a wasteful use of scarce public resources.
He said the estimated N600 million spent on the foreign trip could have been channelled into improving basic education, funding classrooms, or supporting women-led businesses in the state.
“Today, while our children at the basic education level — whose education is the responsibility of local governments—are out of school, and those in school lack classrooms and teachers, while LGA pensioners are likely owed, and teachers continue to struggle under economic hardship, it is disheartening that scarce resources are channelled into frivolities such as foreign trips for the wives of local government chairmen who hold no public office, at an estimated cost of about ₦600 million in public funds.”
Naija Times Journalism Foundation (NTJF) also condemned the reported wasteful spending of scarce public resources by the chairmen on a needless trip by their wives.
According to a statement signed by the Chairman of Naija Times Journalism Foundation, Mr. Ehi Braimah, “the spouses of LGA Chairmen are not public officials, and even the idea of leadership training in a foreign land amounts to a bogus contraption meant to siphon public funds.
“This amounts to engaging in unbridled corruption, fiscal indiscipline and impunity. We are therefore of the considered position that the relevant anti-corruption agencies, specifically the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), should immediately cause an investigation of this gross abuse of office and the serious violation of extant public finance laws,” he explained.
A 75-year-old retiree from Yola North LGA, Abubakar Shehu, was also quoted in a media report as calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to probe the “financial scandal.”
“What is the leadership position of local government chairmen’s wives? Even the wife of the governor is not sent abroad for leadership training. This is nothing but corruption and a mockery of democracy in Adamawa State,” he reportedly said.
Others have also called on the EFCC and the ICPC to recover the funds and prosecute those that expended public resources on the frivolous trip to serve as deterrent to other chairmen across the country.
