Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has said that the metropolitan authorities for Kaduna, Zaria and Kafanchan are administrative structures created to manage the major cities within the state.
Rufaí stated this while swearing in the administrators and two High Court Judges on Friday.
“It’s obvious that some people do not understand the concept of metropolitan authorities. Our major cities are bigger than the LGCs, Local Government Councils, in which they have been spread apart.”
“The Kaduna Capital Territory did this job until the late 1970s for those old enough to remember, Kaduna was always administered by an administrator.
“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 LGC, local government council, 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.
Stating that the local government system will still be responsible for education, healthcare and agriculture, 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.
