Honourable Adebayo Isola, is the chairman of Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) in Kwara State and he is also the council boss of Ilorin South Local Government Area. He spoke with Biola Azeez on the recent happenings in the state. Excerpts

What do you have to say on the allegation in some quarters that the local governments are not performing because the state government is sitting on their fund?

I want to start by saying that ALGON as a body has never at any forum alluded to any fact that the state is sitting on local government money. We have not. If NULGE says that on our behalf, it was not a job that they were sent by us. They are going on their own for their own reason. It is true and I can confirm that the state government does not sit on our money. However, there are responsibilities and commitments that we have and they are based on laws. These are connected to funding of certain institutions like SUBEB, KWASU joint project, teachers salary, teachers special allowance, pension for local government staffers, 0 clean and Green, and all these are backed by law. They are all first line charges that once the money (allocation) comes in, naturally they go to all these. And I want to say that what we call gross allocation is a combination of FAAC from Abuja and the 10 per cent IGR from the state government. It's the money that comes to us on monthly basis before deductions are made.

What then is the problem with the local governments?

The challenge that we have is that there has been a drastic shortfall in the money that comes from the federation account which is about 90 per cent of our receipt against commitments that we have and that statutorily, we must meet and that we cannot meet any longer. It has got as bad as that, even many of us cannot pay salary of our workers. That's why we hear noise these days. The fact is that there is shortfall from our receipt from Abuja. It's not that money comes and somebody sits on that money. I'm speaking on behalf of all the council chairmen in the state.

How do you describe the recent face-off between NULGE and the state government?

The problem that recently happened was due to information or what I can call knowledge gap. At the end of a meeting we all had with Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed, it was made clear that the state is not taking any money from the local government, rather the state is contributing 10 per cent of its total IGR to the local government. The councils are expected to contribute to PAYE and MDGs schemes which they had not been doing in past few months because of shortfall or paucity of fund.

The shortfall was N350 million in May and June totalling N700 million. It created a lot of challenge for councils. We were able to solve this when the state government accessed fund from excess crude account. Many councils could not pay salary due to this challenge. And besides, excess crude account is specifically meant for capital projects, not for recurrent expenditure. So, it's abnormal for us to take money, but because of the exigency, we needed to do that for June. In July, there was a shortfall of about N550 million from the allocation due to the councils.

Joint Account is meant for the purpose of executing projects in the local government area. Monthly allocation cannot meet monthly commitments. Local governments cannot execute any project with normal allocation. We've been advised to watch our expenditure profile as monthly allocation is dwindling and the IGR is not doing well. The joint project is to the advantage of th councils because less contribution comes from councils.