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As Nigerians enters 2017 the expectations are quite high from the government of President Muhammadu Buhari. The change he has been struggling for over 30 years to bring to Nigeria is expected to take a full course, failure of which hopes will be dashed.
Notwithstanding, Nigerians are appreciative of the changes they have seen so far because it is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria. Godfatherism is gradually fading, the untouchables have no hiding place, Boko Haram is been defeated, no free money anymore, every body has gone back to work either in a white collar job or agriculture, food is now produced in Nigeria instead of importation and so forth.
One of the key expectations of Nigerians this year is the local government autonomy. It behooves on the All Progressives Congress (APC) to use its control of the National Assembly and the majority of states governments and their Houses of Assemblies to bring this long held dream to success. Else they will be stamped by the masses who brought about the political change in Nigeria.
Granting Local Government autonomy will bring immense development to Nigeria and the people will no longer be detected to by the governors who hid in the state capitals and steal all the monies meant for the development of the local areas.
Local councils will also share the responsibility of enhancing economic development of their areas and the provision of social amenities to the people. Thus attention will certainly be drawn to the Area Councils rather than States and Federal government as it is presently.
In preparation for the role the local governments will soon be expected to assumed when the autonomy is grated we wish to share in the experience of a city council in U.S, equivalent of Nigeria's Local governmenrt system what they have been doing which in Nigeria is still regarded as the duty of the federal or state government.
This is in the ares of power generation.
In November 2016, the city of St. Petersburg, Florida committed to switching its power sources over to 100 percent renewable
energy—the first city in the Sunshine State to pledge to do away with fossil fuels
entirely, Motherboard reports.
The city council voted unanimously to dedicate $800,000 of the $1 million the
city received from as part of its settlement with energy company BP over the
2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, to begin designing a logistics plan, impact
report and cost summary of moving the entire city over to renewable energy.
Of that, $300,000 will be used for
a county partnership to evaluate how climate change could impact the area's
most vulnerable residents, such as impacts from sea level rise and stronger
hurricanes.
Unfortunately, there's no date set
yet for the adoption of this plan, but the next stage will involve a timeline,
organizers said.
“Working towards 100 [percent]
clean energy and zero waste will help ensure that St. Pete remains a city of
opportunity where the sun shines on all who come to live, work and play,"
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman said in a statement. The city is home to
just over 250,000 people, as of a 2014 city report.
While the Tampa Bay region is known
as an environmentally friendly area (it’s among a handful of regions in the
U.S. that have built desalination plants to diversify their water supply),
Pinellas County as a whole voted Republican in the presidential election, while
St. Petersburg voted Democrat. At the same time, the state’s leader, Republican
Governor Rick Scott, is a climate change denier and and consistently cut
environmental regulation in favor of business opportunities.
"There was a clear need from a
city to step up and take the lead on this."
This vote also comes on the heels
of a failed solar power state ballot amendment voted down in the 2016 general
election in November, which environmentalists said would put control of solar
power leasing options entirely in the hands of Florida’s power companies
(potentially making it more expensive to install).
Emily Gorman, a member of the
national environmental group the Sierra Club and the campaign manager for Ready
for 100 St. Pete, an environmental advocacy campaign to get the city to adopt
renewable energy, told Motherboard in a phone call the vote is a victory for
the environmental health of the region—but the hard work is just beginning.
The next steps will be designing a
plan that looks at the total cost of several strategies, including creating a
centralized energy generation station like a solar farm, or installing solar panels
on all homes, and evaluating the impact of these plans on vulnerable
communities.
Then, a full audit will be done of
all energy usage in the city, including homes, businesses and city buildings,
to evaluate how to increase the efficiency. There will also be an effort to
retrofit infrastructure to be more energy efficient, including installing
better insulation, solar panels and more energy-conserving home appliances.
Gorman said St. Petersburg’s
location on the western coast of Florida makes residents aware daily of the
impacts of climate change.
Some cities in Florida already have
issues with saltwater flooding streets during some high tides, and saltwater
intrusion into brackish water areas and freshwater areas has threatened marine
life.
“There was a clear need from a city
to step up and take the lead on this,” Gorman said. “We as a coastal, low-lying
city are on the frontlines of climate change.”
St. Petersburg is the 20th city in
the US to commit to transition to 100 percent renewable energy. Among the other
19 are: Aspen, Colorado; Santa Monica, California; San Francisco; Georgetown,
Texas; and Nassau, New York.
The Local Governments should should be able to adopt such majors that will make them independent and also generate revenue for themselves and above all enhance the lives of Nigerians.
Already there are efforts by government at both federal and states at converting sunshine to solar energy which is worth commending like Sokoto and Jigawa states, however this is one of the areas the local government can be strengthened and made useful to the people as well as help raise the quality of leadership at the that level of government. this will build peoples' confidence in government.
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