The Social-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has called on President Bola Tinubu to withhold federal monthly allocation to states that didn’t hold credible local government elections.

SERAP, a non-governmental advocacy group, made this call in a statement on its X handle on Sunday following the announcement of LG election results held in Rivers, Benue and some other states on Saturday, October 5.

“We’ve urged President Tinubu to immediately withhold federal allocations to states failing to conduct credible local government elections, and to ensure that any allocations from the federation account are paid only to democratically elected local government councils,” SERAP said.

This statement comes on the heels of a series of disturbing trends that have recently greeted the LG polls.

While some states have held theirs – even though it appears to be dominated by the governor – many others have yet to conduct local government elections and keep collecting allocations meant for the local people.

Nigeria’s 774 local governments have been granted autonomy and financial liberty to decide their fates – one of the key achievements of President Tinubu in fiscal restructuring.

Wasiu Alli is a business, economics cum data journalist with strong expertise covering macro trends, capital markets, government policies, corporate earnings and comparative economics analysis. Alli turns raw data into trends that not only tells compelling stories but nudges investors to make valued and informed decisions. He’s an alumnus of Lagos State University and trained at Lagos Business School. He formerly heads the Companies and Markets desk at BusinessDay where he writes and supervises the production of well researched articles on earnings updates, corporate sectoral comparisons, market intelligence as well as interviews with C-suite executives.

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