PAUL ORUDE BAUCHI
Bauchi State Governor, Senator Bala Mohammed has disclosed that he sacked three local government caretaker chairmen because they were involved in illegal tree felling and conniving with some unscrupulous citizens to disposing government property.
The sacked local governments caretaker Chairmen were Baffa Bara (Kirfi), Nura Dan Maisahria (, Ningi and Gara’u Adamu (Darazo) while erstwhile Caretaker Chairman of Tafawa Balewa who was appointed by Governor Mohammed as a Special Adviser Legal Affairs.
Mohammed made the disclosure while swearing-in four council caretaker Chairmen to replace three ones that were removed, on Sunday at the Government House.
“One of the reasons one of the local government chairmen was removed was because he was cutting trees. You shouldn’t do that. Our environment is dear to us. Today we have people coming to Bauchi who are not citizens of Bauchi colluding with local government chairman and deforesting our forest, we cannot accept that. Some of them were selling government lands and allocating them without approval, please we should excuse selfishness,” he said.
Governor Mohammed charged the in-coming caretaker Chairmen to shun corruption, high-handedness but to carry all stakeholders in their various local governments along.
The newly inaugurated chairmen are Alhaji Abbas Waziri (Darazo), Alhaji Garba Bara (Kirfi), Salisu Nasaru (Ningi) and Daniel Danjuma (Tafawa Balewa)
“Most of you are filling vacancies either for those who resigned or those who, because of some reasons that are personal or those who have been found wanting and we had to removed them by virtue of
responsibility.
“Those that we removed are close to me as a person, but governance is not about Bala Mohammed. It is not even about you or anybody. It is about trust given to us by Allah and of course reciprocal trust to the
people who are looking up to us,” he said.
“You know all circumstances of your coming into office, I don’t want to say anything, less I insult anybody. Out of humility and respect but you know the circumstances. You are not sacrosanct; you are not
demi-gods. I want you to make sure that you go back to your local governments, cooperate with the stakeholders, the owners of the local government, they are the people of the local government, the religious
leaders, traditional leaders, and the electorates. Make sure you carry them along, make sure you respect everybody, obey the rules of engagement and regulation”
He however said that the appointment of caretaker chairmen was unconstitutional and undemocratic but became necessary to fill the existing vacancies in the affected local governments.
The governor however assured that the council elections which were suspended would soon be held after the coronavirus pandemic is over.
“I did not want to come out for this swearing-in because I knew I had promised Nigerians that we were going to hold local government elections very soon but this situation is a Doctrine of Necessity that we had to swear in and get an extension of the tenure of local government caretaker chairmen from the state Assembly in view of the COVID19 pandemic which has precluded us from abiding by the time-table set out by the State Independent Electoral Commission”
“I want to reiterate that we will hold council election very soon as soon as it is feasible. We have completed all arrangements to do that. That I the only way we can show and dependable democracy in Nigeria and
we know that these caretaker system is not democratic, it is unconstitutional but we have to fill in the vacuum,” he said.

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