The senator representing Borno South senatorial district, Ali Ndume, has emphasised the need for the local government autonomy to be supported by laws that will strengthen the institution.
He made the observation during during an interactive session with newsmen in Kano over the weekend where he attended the constitutional review committee retreat.
He explained that there are issues that need to be considered for the autonomy of the local government to become a reality while reiterating that he is fully in support of local government autonomy.
To me as is said, I support the autonomy of local government because I have seen it when I was in secondary school up to the time that they started losing their powers.
Local governments constructed roads, provide light, built primary schools. But now it has come to the time that in some local governments, I means some, I want to emphasise this, I have some local governments that if you say to them go your independent ways they wouldn‘t be able to pay their staff, teachers, health workers and others. So that is what I am talking about.
You don‘t just do a blank autonomy, if you do a blank autonomy, there are some local governments in my state, that cannot pay their salaries. That is where that idea of joint account came in so that you can collect from here, collect from there and top for the other.
So this is what we are supposed to look at in the constitutional review, how to make the local government practical, efficient and viable,“ he stated.
On the issue of who conducts the local government elections, the senator stated that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should handle the responsibility as it is currently underutilised.
He dismissed the idea of creating local government elections commissions insisting that INEC should shoulder the responsibility of conducting all elections in the three tiers of government in the country.
On the issue of who will conduct local government elections, I support the idea of INEC conducting the local government election. They do the presidential election, National Assembly elections, state governors election, state houses of Assembly elections, then why not the local government?
One other thing that is propping up in the National Assembly that I am not in support is the idea again of creating local government elections commissions. As you can see, even the name is difficult to pronounce. Why would you go and create a commission that will work for only one week and will not work again until after four years? The INEC you currently have is being underutilised. They can be used for other elections. And then the election in Nigeria is deliberately complicated so that it will be manipulated.
Why don‘t you make laws that the votes will count, why don‘t you make laws that will enable you to vote somebody you want on your phone? Why don‘t you make it possible for INEC to be monitoring the elections where you say you create situation rooms?
These days of technology if you use Google it will tell you where you are. So I think the problem here is lack of sincerity, lack of honesty and lack of fear of God,“ he stated.
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