New constitution: How 20 states reject Local Government autonomy

The efforts to give local government areas autonomy failed yesterday as no fewer than 20 states of the feder­ation have rejected autonomy for local governments in the fourth amendment of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

In the report of the committee on the review of the 1999 Con­stitution submitted by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekwer­emadu, yesterday, 20 states voted against local government autonomy while 16 states voted in support. Twenty-four states were needed for local govern­ments to be free from control of state governments.

The 20 states that voted against are Akwa Ibom, Bay­elsa, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Enugu, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Ondo, Osun, Rivers, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara, while the states that gave the yes votes are Adamawa, Anam­bra, Abia, Bauchi, Benue, Edo, Gonbe, Imo, Kebbi, Kogi, Na­sarawa, Niger, Ogun, Oyo, Pla­teau and Sokoto.

The proposed amendments, which was rejected indicated that “a local government council not democratically elected shall not be recognised by all authori­ties and persons and shall not be entitled to any revenue allo­cation from the Federation Ac­count or the state government nor exercise any function exer­cisable by a local government council under this constitution or any law for the time being in force; and shall stand dissolved at the expiration of a period of four years, commencing from the date the members of the council were sworn in.”

The National Assembly has also empowered the Indepen­dent National Electoral Com­mission (INEC) to deregister political parties, while provision were made for independent can­didates in elections. The extant electoral law stipulates that po­litical parties must sponsor can­didates for elections.

Section 177 has been al­tered, by inserting a new para­graph “(d) he is a member of a political party and is sponsored by that party or he is an indepen­dent candidate.”

The National Assembly also separates the office of the At­torney General of the Federa­tion from the Justice Minister. In a similar vein, the office of the Accountant General of the Federation has been separated from the office of the Accoun­tant General of the Federal Gov­ernment.

The Accountant General of the Federation shall be ap­pointed by the president on the recommendation of National Economic Council, subject to confirmation by the Senate, and shall be responsible for the ad­ministration and disbursement of allocations from the Federa­tion Account to the tiers of gov­ernment.

In an amendment of Section 225, by inserting Section 225A, INEC can deregister political parties if there is a breach of any of the requirements for registra­tion and if such political party fails to win presidential, gov­ernorship of at least one state, chairmanship of at least one local government/area council or a seat in the national or state assembly election.

All the 36 states of the feder­ation approved the amendment.