Development

Bad manners corrupt the moral essence of religion and disrupt the expected perfect God/man relation.

This is the message in the Holy Bible, 1 Corinthians 13: 13, that religion as faith would only be functional and beneficial as a constructive environment for peaceful co-existence. 

''3 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.''

For this to happen, individual adherents must offer just worship based on their belief in their creator the almighty God.

However, all scriptures submit that there can be no development in an environment of chaos, hence love becomes basic and sacrosanct to any religious practice to have an impact on the people and the society.

In the book of Isaiah 59: 1-4, the readiness of God to accept our offer, provide for us, and protect us from all forms of evil is established as a divine design.

However, divine intervention will never be realized in an environment of iniquities.

''1 Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:

2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.''

The Holy Quran equally corroborates and establishes the importance of love in the life cycle of every person-platonic or otherwise.

The Holy Quran 30: 21 with the essence of marriage, family cohesion, and a happy home formation as case studies states, ''And among His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them. And He has put LOVE and MERCY between your hearts: verily in that are signs for those who reflect.''

It is very unfortunate that Nigeria is currently experiencing a gun and sword state of insecurity, where religion is playing a catalyst role to fule the chaos rather than dampening the state of commotion. This is because individual adherents live by hearsay and less of being scripture compliant. Quackery in the houses of God, therefore, offers a satanic state of profanity. This is why the home, society, and the nation are now difficult to be controlled through the moral lessons of the scripture.

For the world to know peace, and Nigeria to enjoy peaceful co-existence, individual worship must understand the admonitions and guide in the scripture of choice and apply the same to suit real-life situations without going out of bounds of the dictates of God. After all, no religion teaches evil.

117 Municipalities are to benefit from of  CFA6.25 billion Local Authority Support Fund(FACT) in Togo.
This disclosure was made recently in a statement by the  Ministry of Decentralization and Economy.
The monies will support all 117 municipalities of the country and will be distributed based on their population size, area, and poverty level.

Of the amount, CFA2.5 billion shall be allocated to the National Grassroots Development Agency (ANADEB) for the development of several projects in municipalities. The FACT, it should be recalled, is a mechanism for financing local municipalities. Created in October 2019, its goal is to pool funds and use them to develop Togolese municipalities.

FACT is a mechanism that came into being in October 2019 for financing local municipalities.  
Its goal is to pool funds and use them to develop Togolese municipalities.

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The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit(NFIU) recently pronounced that states would no longer control the funds of Local Governments in the country beginning from 1 June, 2019.

However, state Governors insist that the NFIU’s action is illegal, but a cross section of Nigerians are of the opinion that the action is timely and would enable development get to the grassroots unhindered.

In this interview, the Spiritual Head, Founder and Grand Imam of Shafaudeen-in-Islam Worldwide, Prof. Sabitu Olagoke opines that autonomy for the Local Governments would end wastage and mismanagement of finances of Local Government funds by state Governors.

Excerpts :

What is your reaction to the pronouncement of the NFIU Local Government funds ?

The pronouncement of the NFIU is long overdue, in view of the fact that the financial scam we are trying to prevent through the states’ control of the Joint accounts of States and Local Governments, only resulted in the impoverishment of the Local Governments as well as the people at the grassroots.

The superpower approach of many state Governors, with the attendant wastage of resources not been directed to the development concern of the grassroots must have informed the NFIU’s pronouncemnt.

Equally, the bureaucratic process leading to the unnecessary delays as well as some hanky panky by the National Assembly and their probable collaboration with the Governors would have informed the Federal Government’s decision to separate the NFIU to do a perfect job.

Naturally, the clamor for the autonomy of Local Governments ought to have been done in the spirit of the need for the development of the grass roots, this is for rural integration to get a boost. The Local Government is closer to the people and this tier of government is easier to approach by the ordinary man.

However, the culture of running governance as a personal empire, arguments would ever surface against the move by the Governors, whose meeting under the umbrella of the Nigeria Governors Forum have never been known to be on the side of the masses, whose rights they regularly and easily trample upon.

The state Governors should realize that their annual budget should be within the limits of what the constitution assigns them and projects to be executed must be such to cover their specified areas of jurisdiction.

All over the world most especially in the countries that are known to be fully developed such as the United Kingdom as well as the french speaking nations like Cote Ivoire, the Local Authorities take charge of development at the grassroots, with visible impact on the lives of the people, making their nations to follow the normal curve of economic class-Low, Middle and High, but in Nigeria, the middle class has gone into extinction, leaving us to the mercy of the low, high and outrageously and extremely very high in an environment of poverty, destitution, hunger and diseases, with every matter of development been politicized.

Structurally in Nigeria, a lot of things are wrong and they have been there for so long, mainly because the masses are highly marginalized and incapacitated. This has made the politicians to lose focus on development, while they chase the shadows of self aggrandizement, illegal acquisition of wealth with low records of physical symbol on record of good performance while in office.

All the masses could reap as dividends of Democracy is mere propaganda to cajole the people . They spend three months in office as political office holders, all they acquire during this period would be fatter than the gratuity of retired Professors, who must have served the nation for almost 40 to 50 years.

With the NFIU’s pronouncement, sanity would be introduced in the financial transactions of the Local Governments. Also one would hope that the institutional committees such as the ACTU will equally spring into action to check the excesses of principal officers and surrogate allied officers in milking dry various institutions. For example there is a need for Nigerians to know the sources of the funds of some civil servants building Malls and edifices in Abuja and Lagos and even buying houses abroad.

I have seen Universities and Polytechnics, where some people appointed as Bursars thank their their luck in their religious houses and with all fanfare throw parties as if to say their salaries would be more than that of the Senators.

I have equally seen Registrars building palaces of complexes in different cosmopolitan towns and floating event centers as well as hotels spreading across hectares of land, but without having genuine sources of funds from any of their established business conglomerate.

The owners of these, reflect the rot in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, in a land where we are fighting corruption. We must not lose sight of this.

To make the financial autonomy of Local Governments to stand firm, there is the need to have a very effective network of anti-graft measures to checkmate possible excesses of Local Government Principal Officers from relaunching orgies of financial recklessness.

It is not enough to make a law or effect a change, it is necessary to monitor critically, the workings in order that the Local Government does not again deviate from the expected service target of effecting development positively, with welfare of the people as a priority.