Constitution Amendment: Is LG Autonomy Heading For Dead End?

Five months after the National Assembly transmitted 44 bills of the constitution amendment to the State House of Assemblies, the much talked-about Local Government autonomy is heading for a dead end.

10 States have passed the Local Government Autonomy bill, out of the 36 States. Lagos and Ekiti State House of Assemblies have already rejected it.

It is unlikely that Rivers, Ondo, Imo, Ebonyi, Kwara, Plateau Kaduna, Kebbi, Zamfara, Taraba, Yobe, Gombe and Bauchi will pass the bill.

Out of the 36 States, the 10 States that have passed the local government autonomy bill are: Delta, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Osun, Ogun, Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Kogi and Katsina.
Analysis of voting patterns on LGA autonomy by the State Houses of Assembly, indicated that passage is being awaited in Cross River, Bayelsa, Oyo, Niger, Nasarawa, Benue, Kano, Jigawa, Sokoto, Adamawa and Borno States.

Despite calls by Nigerians and the international community for local government autonomy in Nigeria, the bill, despite passage by the 10 Assembly, couldn’t see the light of the day when taken for concurrence at the State House of Assemblies.

The Clerk to the National Assembly, Arch Amos Ojo, had on March 29, 2022 transmitted 44 Constitution Review Bills to the Clerks of the State Houses of Assembly for concurrence.

About five months after, the state house of assemblies are yet to get back to the national assembly but findings by LEADERSHIP indicated that 10 houses of assemblies have already passed the LG autonomy as of Thursday following its passage by the Enugu State House of Assembly.
The bills require the approval of two-thirds of State Houses of Assembly or 24 out of the 36 State Assembly to become laws.
From records, data and the pulse of some members of the State House of Assemblies, it will be difficult to get the 24 houses of assembly that will pass the bill.
Findings show that only 11 states are now willing to pass the bill which will put the total number of states that will pass the bill to 21, falling short of the 24 states as required by law.
It was gathered that some state houses of assembly members are unable to sit because most of the members have refused to come to the House.
“Over 75% of them (state assembly lawmakers) lost their return ticket so morale is low. We are working hard to push them to attend to the bills sent since March 2022,” the Deputy National Team Leader, PERL- ECP, a governance programme funded by the UK’ s Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), John E. Mutu said.
Mutu expressed confidence that with the sensitisation going on in the states, more State House of Assembly may likely pass the bill.
Also, the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) and Transparency International (TI) have asked the State Houses of Assembly to do the right thing and pass the LG autonomy bill.
Speaking through their leader, Awwal Musa Rafsanjani, the CSOs said most lawmakers are only interested in politicking rather than working on laws for the good governance of the country.
“Like we have always maintained, most of these lawmakers are not really interested in constitutional amendment. What they have done is just to justify the spending from the votes of the constitution amendment.
“This process has been going on and we have not gotten any favourable progress. As far as we are concerned, the move by the national assembly to show that they were working on the constitution was to justify the billion and other things spent in the name of constitutional amendment,” he said.
According to Rafsanjani, the lawmakers know what they are doing, adding that now that many of the members in the state house of assemblies are not coming back, the same thing with the national assembly, Nigerians should not be surprised if the LG autonomy bill is not passed.