Please remove our useless Nasarawa State House of Assembly!!! 23 states vote against LG autonomy •NULGE directs members, Nigerians to boycott 2015 elections All the states in the South-South have voted against local government autonomy, just as all states in the North-West. While all the states in the South-South and North-West voted against the move, all states in the North Central fully supported local government autonomy. In total, 23 states voted against the local government autonomy, while 13 voted in favour. Piqued by the voting trend, the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) has directed all its members, especially in the states which rejected local government autonomy to boycott 2015 general election or vote out the party in power in those states. It also called on all Nigerians to rise against killers of democracy at the local government level by staying at home during elections. The Senate and the House of Representatives have done their work by supporting the move for local government autonomy, but to scale through, it must also be supported by the two-third of the Houses of Assembly in the 36 states of the federation. The states which voted against local government autonomy from the South-West are Ondo, Ekiti and Osun; from the South-South— Rivers, Cross River, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom, while from the South-East are Enugu and Imo states. Others are North-East— Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe; North-West—Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states. The states that supported local government autonomy are Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ebonyi, Abia, Anambra, Adamawa, Plateau, Niger, Kogi, Benue, Nasarawa and Kwara states. Speaking with Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, on Thursday, the General Secretary of NULGE, Joshua Irapakop, who expressed surprise at the decision of the states that voted against local government autonomy said democracy had been totally killed at the local government level in the country. He blamed the states governors for the development, just as he called on NULGE members not to vote during the election or vote out the party in power in those states. Irapakop said: “Local government is the voice of the people. Our members and the public should vote against those who voted against local government autonomy. “They took the matter to the public, asking for their opinion and the people said they wanted local government autonomy. What have they done now with their decision? It means the people are not relevant. “It is high time Nigerians moved against the people in power, who go against what the people want. The only way they can protest that is by staying at home during the 2015 elections. They should not vote.” He stated that NULGE would be staging a protest in all the states affected, because “their action is not democratic, especially in those states that voted against local government autonomy.” Irapakop challenged them to come out and tell Nigerians their reasons for voting against it, adding that “we will not hesitate to mobilise our members and picket those state Houses of Assemly that have voted against it.” NULGE president, Ibrahim Khaleel, also told the Nigerian Tribune that the two chambers at the federal level were able to harmonise their positions and came up with a common position, which was the opinion of majority of Nigerians. He stated that this was done in the best interest of the Nigerian project. Khaleel described the governors as clog in the wheel of progress and development of Nigeria, adding “all previous attempts to strengthen the institutional framework of local governments have been hijacked or killed by the conspiracy of these governors.” The NULGE president added: “The wise decision for the governors, if they will understand, is to strengthen the local government. Like we always say, strengthening the local government is not about the local government workers. What we need in Nigeria now is stability. What we need now is participatory democracy.” He, therefore, called on them to rescind their decision by going along with the wishes of majority of people of Nigeria.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 07:07:01 +0000
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