My Predecessors Used Joint Projects To Shortchanged LGs – Gov. Mohammed Says 

BY ADEYEMI AKANJI, BAUCHI – Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, has said that previous governors of the state used joint projects as avenues to shortchange Local Governments Councils of their resources, warning that the development must not be allowed to continue.

Mohammed said that his administration will not do joint projects which he described as very bad, adding that the Accountant General of the state is in a position to paint the picture of what was done before for which the present State government is bearing the burden.

In the words of Governor Mohammed; “They have really finished us. All the money has been spent and today, we are living on overdraft every month as local governments.

“We are the only state in the country where the Local Government is suffering like this, but, that does not mean we cannot free resources to do projects. We will put our heads together to do something so that your tenure will be something you will be proud of and you will leave legacies and landmarks”.

Mohammed, who stated these on Thursday when he had a meeting with the Local Government Chairmen, their deputies and security agencies in the state, lamented that the situation is not easy at all.

He said that in spite of the efforts of his administration to end the menace of ghost workers in the state civil service, people are still devising new ways of defrauding the government and syphoning the meagre resources available for running of the administration.

The Governor noted that most of the ghost workers are in the local governments particularly in the Primary Health Care Development and in the teaching profession.

On the security situation in the state, he said that the state is not there yet because there are a lot of security problems which are being created at the Local Government levels.

The Governor however assured that the state government is trying its best to overcome the problems adding that it will look at all the local government areas with one form of insecurity or the other.

Earlier, the Secretary to the Bauchi State Government (SSG), Mohammed Sabiu Baba, said that the meeting was specifically held to discuss issues of administration at the Local Government level in order to positively impact on the lives of the people.