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Strengthening Nigeria’s Grassroots: APC-IGG’s Push for Federal Representation in Local Councils

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By Abdulrahman Aliagan

In an era where the demand for good governance resonates louder than ever, the All Progressives Congress Initiative For Good Governance (APC-IGG) is at the forefront of a transformative agenda. Spearheaded by its National President, Ambassador Musa Muhammed Tsoken, the APC-IGG is advocating for a groundbreaking bill that promises to reshape governance at the grassroots level across Nigeria.

Ambassador Tsoken’s call to action targets a critical gap in Nigeria’s governance structure: the need for effective federal oversight at the local government level. By proposing a bill that ensures federal representation in all 774 local government councils, Tsoken and the APC-IGG aim to infuse these councils with greater efficiency, transparency, and accountability.

This initiative is not just about increasing oversight—it’s about building a bridge between the federal government and the grassroots, ensuring that local governments are empowered to meet the needs of their communities.

The bill’s objectives are threefold, each addressing a fundamental aspect of local governance:

Smooth Monitoring and Supervision: The bill seeks to establish robust mechanisms for monitoring local government activities, ensuring they align with national development goals. This would provide a consistent framework for evaluating performance and implementing corrective measures.

Efficient Utilization of Allocations: Local governments receive statutory allocations meant to drive development at the grassroots. However, inefficiencies and mismanagement have often plagued these funds. The proposed bill aims to guarantee that these allocations are utilized effectively, directly impacting the lives of citizens.

Unhindered Governance: Governance at the local level should be seamless and responsive. By removing obstacles that hinder effective administration, the bill aims to create a conducive environment for uninterrupted governance, fostering a more transparent and accountable local government system.

Ambassador Tsoken has reached out to key stakeholders, urging them to champion this bill. The call extends to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Senate President Godswill Obot Akpabio, Speaker of the House of Representatives Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, and other influential figures, including APC National Chairman H.E. Umar Abdullahi Ganduje and Alhaji Bello Lawal, President of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON).

These leaders are seen as pivotal in turning this vision into reality, providing the necessary political will and legislative support to institute this change.

The APC-IGG is more than just a political initiative; it’s a movement dedicated to fostering transparency and accountability within the governance framework. The group’s efforts are centered on:

Advocating for Transparency: By promoting internal audit practices, the APC-IGG aims to curtail corruption and enhance accountability. This commitment to transparency is vital in restoring public trust in government institutions.

Strengthening Institutional Structures: The APC-IGG works tirelessly to fortify the party’s internal mechanisms, ensuring that the APC can deliver on its campaign promises and serve the Nigerian people effectively.

Supporting Good Governance: Through collaboration with various stakeholders, the APC-IGG champions best practices in governance, particularly at the local level, where direct interaction with the populace occurs.

At the heart of the APC-IGG’s mission is its support for President Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima’s Renewed Hope Agenda. This agenda seeks to drive sustainable economic growth and development across Nigeria. The APC-IGG, with its team of distinguished professionals and academics from Nigeria and the diaspora, is committed to turning this vision into reality.

The proposed bill represents a crucial step in this direction, offering a pathway to more effective and accountable local governance. By ensuring federal representation at the local level, the APC-IGG believes that Nigeria can achieve a governance model that truly serves its people, enhancing their quality of life and fostering a more inclusive and prosperous society.

As the APC-IGG continues to push for this legislative change, it calls on all Nigerians to support this initiative. The success of this bill could mark a new chapter in Nigeria’s democratic journey, one where local governments are not just administrative units but true agents of development and change.

In this pursuit, the APC-IGG stands as a beacon of hope, championing a cause that seeks to bring governance closer to the people, ensuring that every Nigerian, regardless of their location, feels the impact of good governance.

   

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This is not a story about a reluctant investor. It is a story about capital that wants to move, cannot find enough places willing and able to receive it in a form it can underwrite, and quietly waits instead. Multiply that fund by the hundreds of pension schemes, sovereign wealth vehicles, commercial banks and infrastructure funds now carrying dedicated allocations for emerging-market infrastructure, and a pattern emerges that rarely makes it into a headline: the world is not short of capital for infrastructure. It has capital in historic abundance, sitting adjacent to a historic infrastructure gap, unable to cross the distance between the two. The Comfortable Explanation  The explanation on offer at every major infrastructure summit is a familiar one. Global infrastructure investment needs run into the tens of trillions of dollars over the coming decade; committed capital falls well short; therefore, the problem is one of insufficient funding, and the solution is more of it: more pledges, more blended-finance facilities, more climate funds, more multilateral capital increases. It is a comfortable explanation because it assigns responsibility clearly to governments who under-fund, institutions who under-commit, and it offers a clean remedy: raise more. 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The first condition is met, overwhelmingly, across nearly every category of capital that matters to infrastructure. The second is met by only a small fraction of the projects competing for it. The result is a market that looks, from the outside, like a financing gap, and functions, from the inside, like a conversion problem: an abundance of capital on one side, an abundance of infrastructure need on the other, and an underbuilt set of mechanisms in between capable of turning one into the other at any meaningful scale. Where the Conversion Breaks  The break does not happen at the ends of the process. It happens in the middle, in the unglamorous sequence of work that turns a plausible concept into an instrument a fiduciary can sign. A promising transmission project needs a feasibility study rigorous enough to survive institutional scrutiny rather than optimistic enough to attract early interest. It needs offtake arrangements that hold up under real counterparty and currency risk, not the counterparty risk assumed in a base case. It needs environmental and social documentation calibrated to the standards of the institutions being asked to fund it, not the standards of the jurisdiction hosting it. It needs a legal and commercial structure that allocates risk in ways a commercial lender, not only a development financier, will accept. It needs a sponsor capable of executing what has been proposed, not merely capable of proposing it. 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