The Chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, Dr. Gift Worlu, has declared that 100 days in office is insufficient to fairly assess the performance of elected council chairmen in Rivers State.
Dr. Worlu made the remark yesterday in Port Harcourt during an interactive session organised by the Rivers Peace Initiative to review the activities of the 23 local government chairmen since their inauguration.
“You can hardly do anything within three months or so that constitutes the 100 days in office except you want to play to the gallery,” he said, stressing that challenges facing local governments differ widely.
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“Again, you must understand that local governments vary in terms of challenges and opportunities within them,” he added, explaining why a uniform yardstick cannot be applied across the state.
Convener of the Rivers Peace Initiative, Mr. Obinna Ebogidi, urged the council chairmen to prioritise programmes that directly improve citizens’ lives, noting that the local government remains the closest tier to the people.
“In the next ten years, nobody will remember the political struggles, alignments, or contests of this moment. What people will remember is how your time in office made their lives better – whose children could go to school because of your decisions, whose businesses survived because of your policies. Those are the things that endure,” Ebogidi said.
He described the event as a timely reminder that grassroots leadership must always answer the question: “Is the ordinary person getting better?”
In his contribution, Rivers State Council Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Comrade Paul Bazia, advised the chairmen to regularly consult the governed when designing programmes to avoid wastage of scarce resources.
The programme attracted officials from Obio/Akpor, Khana, Bonny, Abua-Odual, Akuku-Toru and Ahoada East local government areas as well as Media professionals in Rivers State.
