Why I created metropolitan authorities — El-Rufai

Governor Nasir El-Rufai has explained the reason for creating metropolitan Authorities for Kaduna, Zaria and Kafanchan.

There have been criticisms over the territories and the administrators appointed to manage them.

Some had described the move as duplication of the powers of Local Government Areas.

But while swearing in the administrators and two High Court Judges on Friday, the governor explained that the new metropolitan authorities are not Local Government Councils or Local Government Development Areas or any arm of these.

He said they are also not a new tier of Government but administrative structures to manage the major cities within the state.

“It’s obvious that some people do not understand the concept of metropolitan authorities. Our major cities are bigger than the Local Government Councils in which they have been balkanize. The Kaduna Capital Territory did this job until the late 1970s for those old enough to remember, Kaduna was always administered by an administrator who was the administrator of the capital Territory.

“Things worked much better then, the replacement structures that came after the 1976 local government reforms have not worked as well as the capital territory administrative structure did. This is why we are going back to it,” he explained.

El-Rufai further added that the functions delegated to the metropolitan authorities are those that no local government in Nigeria carries out effectively or satisfactorily if at all.

He said no state can run a city effectively through the structure of a ministry for LGA, citing the example of when he was the minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and how he had to convince former President Olusegun Obasanjo to dissolve ministry of FCT and create a Federal capital Territory Administration.

He said the new Administrators in Zaria, Kaduna and Kafancan will exercise similar powers and responsibilities in their designated areas as that of the minister of FCT in Abuja.

He said the establishment of metropolitans still leaves a lot of functions in the hands of the Local Government because the chairmen have a lot to do in education, healthcare and agriculture.

(Daily Trust)