The National Assembly recently ammended section 124 of the constitution and by so doing, granted administrative and financial autonomy to each of the 774 LGAs in the country. While it is supposed to come as a welcome development to all men of good conscience and true lovers of democracy, it seems not to bode well with our governors as the 36 of them have kicked against the move and have vowed to frustrate the bill at all cost through the instrumentality of state houses of Assembly (many of which are tied to the governors apron strings). Is the governors reaction not against the tenets of federalism? Are they acting in the larger public interest? Why are the so-called progressive governors in APC also against local government autonomy? How will development get to the grassroots if the state and local governments continue to operate the obnoxious joint account where money is dispensed via the even more fraudulent Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC)? Federalism is a system of government in which powers are shared between two or more constituent entities by a written constitution. Each entity is supposed to be complementary with and not surbodinate to each other. On the basis of this definition, are the LGAs supposed to be appendages of the governors? Are LGA chairmen supposed to be answerable to governors or to the electorate at the grassroots level? The scrapping of the dubious State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) and granting of financial and administrative autonomy to LGAs are among the few laudable moves by the National Assembly in recent times. It is high time the Local Goverment system was given a huge turnaround, inspite of the hard stance of our governors.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:45:55 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015