Assembly Speakers Back State Police

The Conference of Speakers of State Legislatures of Nigeria has promised to expedite action on the passage of a legislation for the creation of state police to deal with Nigeria’s nationwide insecurity.

“I can assure you that the state police plan or agenda will definitely fly at the state level. We on the subnational, we have seen the challenges of security. We see the inadequacy of the national police. For us to curtail the issue of insecurity so we are confident that once it gets to the states house of assembly it will pass,” chairman of the conference, Edward Adebo Ogundoyin said yesterday at the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) in Abuja.

He also disclosed that the conference had begun a process to digitalise legislative processes at the state level, saying the move would ensure accountability, extract meaningful contribution from members and entrench transparency. The focus is to do away with paper work and cut cost.

Ogundoyin said the assemblies would start having live plenary sessions, e-parliament legislation and ensure every assembly has a functioning website to allow the public have access to their processes and documents when the digitalisation process begins.

Ogundoyin who is also the speaker of Oyo State House of Assembly said it was an aberration to grant autonomy to constitutionally created local government areas. He said states should be allowed to determine the number of local governments they want to have, while implementing a blanket cover of supervision on all the local areas.

“My opinion is that in the pursuit of true federalism, it would be an aberration to give the local government their autonomy as being thought about,” said in a response to the question by LEADERSHIP on why it was difficult for Nigeria to have autonomy for the LGAs. He however said he was speaking in his personal capacity.”

Consequently, he urged Nigeria to go with true federalism, the type where states come together to unite under the authority of the federal government but still have the leeway to determine their own destiny. He said there were calls already for the scrapping of local governments within the constitution to allow for only states and federal governments.

He said a situation where autonomy is granted to the LGAs and they are allowed to take revenue directly from the federation account will not take the country anywhere. He said such a practice would take states like Lagos and Oyo who have created Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) backward in terms of governance.

“What I believe is that each state should be the captain of its own destiny. They should give them the opportunity to determine how many local governments they want to have, like we have in the United States of America and other countries practising true federalism,” Ogundoyin said.