EFFECT OF VITAMINS C AND E INTAKE ON BLOOD ... - EuroJournals

European Journal of Social Sciences - Volume 2, Number 1 (2006)
and federal governments, limiting their competence, efficiency and effectiveness to a
great extent. Bello-Imam and Uga went further to spell out the form such external
interference use to take and these are listed as follows:
a) Usurpation of the lucrative sources of revenue of local government under the
pretence of lack of executive capacity to generate the given revenue sources;
b) Automatic and numerous extra-budgetary deductions from the statutory
allocation of the local governments within a state by the supervising state
government; either for reported expenditure on their respective behalf or for yet
to be executed projects on their behalf;
c) Imposition of some ad-hoc functions on local governments by both the state and
federal governments for execution on their respective behalf without
commensurate finances to execute them. Examples here include funding of
NOA, NDLEA, NDE, NEPA, INEC, FEAP, NPC, police/community relations
committee, educational expenses of various types, etc.
d) Other reported specific deductions are:
(i) deduction of 15 percent of the local government statutory allocation for the
local government staff Pension Board;
(ii) deduction of 5 percent for the payment of Traditional Rulers’ stipend which
has tot up to 37.5billion naira over the period, apart from purchase of
limousines by some state governments on behalf of their local governments;
(iii) deduction of 1 percent of the statutory allocation of local governments for
the regular training and retraining of career staff of local government;
(iv) deduction of 1 percent from the monthly statutory allocation of local
governments as additional administrative charges by the supervising state
government;
(v) deduction of N10,000 for support of INEC activities during the last general
election;
(vi) payment of overbloated security votes to elected officers, i.e. chairman and
vice chairman of the local government; and
(vii) regular and sometimes occasional deduction from the local government
statutory allocation for support of the state Chief executive and all pertinent
state officers’ social ceremonies like marriage for either of them or their
children, burial ceremonies of their parents, house warming ceremonies,
etc.
(a) Lack of open tendering and due process in most of the activities of the local
government occasioned more often than not by political interference;
(b) The immense expenditure spent on overheads at the grass roots and hence
only very meagre financial resources are left for development; and
(c) Pervasive corruption in grassroots governance. Although corruption is not
unique to local governments, but a general social malaise at all levels of
government in Nigeria, it is assuming some disturbing proportions at the
local government level.
Nigeria’s fiscal structure: a brief overview
Without mincing words, the poor state of the current local government system can be
traced to many factors ranging from socio-political, constitutional and fiscal issues. For
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