Tension is brewing in Adamawa State following the decision of the local government chairmen to send their wives on a leadership training trip to Istanbul, Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 21 wives, along with some senior officials of the Ministry of Local Government, reportedly departed the country last week for the programme, a move that has sparked outrage among workers and retirees who described it as wasteful and insensitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chairman of Toungo Local Government and state chairman of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria, Suleiman Toungo, confirmed the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He defended the initiative, noting that council chairmen themselves had benefited from similar overseas training two months earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe did our training two months ago, so I do not see anything wrong in our wives going for training outside the country,\u201d Toungo told reporters. \u201cThey are our wives and we need their advice. We are looking at the importance of training them on leadership, not the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But workers and retirees disagreed, accusing the government of misplaced priorities at a time many of them are still awaiting their gratuities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A 75-year-old retiree from Yola North Local Government, Abubakar Shehu, condemned the trip and called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to probe what he described as a financial scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat is the leadership position of local government chairmen\u2019s wives? Even the wife of the governor is not sent abroad for leadership training. This is nothing but corruption and a mockery of democracy in Adamawa State,\u201d Shehu said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another retired staff, who asked not to be named, urged Governor Ahmadu Fintiri to hand over the matter to the EFCC to safeguard the image of his administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe now see the dangers of local government autonomy. Some of these wives did not even complete primary school, yet they are being flown to Istanbul in the name of leadership training,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A serving council chairman from northern Adamawa, who spoke anonymously, also distanced himself from the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said he was not consulted before his wife\u2019s name was submitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was sleeping when I got a call from one of the ALGON officials asking me to send my wife\u2019s details for a visa. That was the first time I heard of such a project. This is simply an abuse of public funds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Workers\u2019 unions are now mounting pressure on anti-graft agencies to investigate the expenditure, describing the foreign training of chairmen\u2019s wives as an insult to struggling staff and pensioners in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tension is brewing in Adamawa State following the decision of the local government chairmen to send their wives on a leadership training trip to Istanbul, Turkey. The 21 wives, along with some senior officials of the Ministry of Local Government, reportedly departed the country last week for the programme, a move that has sparked outrage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","category-naija-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-80-e1758791329100.png?fit=500%2C354&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19484,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482\/revisions\/19484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}