SGF calls for revamping of Local Government System to tackle insecurity
Jethro Yerga, Jalingo
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha has said that to effectively tackle insecurity bedeviling the country, the Local Government system must be revived.
The secretary who stated this while fielding questions from journalists in Jalingo, the Taraba State Capital noted that the Local Government structure in the country is no longer functional owing to lack of resources.
“We must revamp our Local Government system to see how best we can translate the labour force in those areas to meaningful developments. There are too many idle hands that are loitering around in our Local Governments that can be used to ferment trouble and continue to destabilize the system.
“We therefore, must have to restructure the security architecture of the country and collectively take responsibility and not to blame any one segment of the society”. He said.
The Secretary who emphasized that Security of lives and property is a shared responsibility, urged traditional leaders not to leave security issues in the hands of the government alone but to be proactive in tackling security issues in their various domains especially that they are the ones at the grass root.
Commenting on the ongoing strike embarked upon by the National Association of Resident Doctors across the country, the Secretary appealed to the Resident Doctors to take cognizance of their ethics which does not warrant them to put patients to unnecessary torture as a result of their target to get government to attend to their needs and return to work for the benefit of the patients in particular and Nigeria at large.
While expressing government’s determination to tackle the long lingered issue of the strike by the Resident Doctors, the Secretary noted that the Federal Government was doing everything possible to bring the matter to an end. He said “the Federal Government has taken decisive steps to see that this issue that has lingered for too long is addressed squally but as I said earlier, it is a shared responsibility by all tiers of government.
“The Federal Government is responsible for policy formulation and administration of tertiary medical institutions such as Federal Medical Centers and Teaching Hospitals, the State Government is responsibility for general hospitals and the Local Governments are also responsibility for primary Health Care Development Centers.
So we will have to revisit and streamline all these things to see that there is a coordinated funding and resourcing of institutions and administration of policies. I believe if we revisit and deal with the fundamental deficiencies in the application of these policies, we will get out of these things”. He stated.
On the issue of the second dose of COVID-19 which had since arrived Nigeria, Boss Mustapha revealed that the vaccine is still going NAFDAC statutory examination and once NAFDAC gives out green light, the vaccine would be deployed to the various states for effective administration.
He appealed to Nigerians to be conscious of the fact that COVID-19 has not disappeared and so should continue to observe all the pharmaceutical precautionary guidelines, emphasizing that the virus is coming back and it would come with lots of issues.
