Spokesman of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Akin Rotimi, has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has always believed in devolution of power, that those who are closest to the people should take the lead in their development.
Rotimi said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Saturday where he discussed the judgment of the Supreme Court ruling that the Federal Government should bypass the State government in the allocation of funds to the Local Government.
Rotimi said, “Nigerians could get a sense of the thinking of Mr President, who of course the entire legal action must have been taken at his behest. He’s always been a Federalist, he’s always someone that has believed in the devolution of power, you know, in the spirit of subsidiarity to allow those that are closest to the people to take the lead in their development. The question had then been about whether it’s a two-tier system that we want to run or a three-tier system, whether the states are the ones supposed to be able to determine first of all the creation of local governments and how local governments are administered.”
When he was asked his thoughts that he and the 10th Assembly had about the judgement, the Reps spokesperson said, “Concerning the judgment, to be honest, I haven’t gotten a lead copy of the judgment to be able to study intoto and be able to comment on it authoritatively. But I must mention that the House of Representatives- the 10th assembly, has a legislative agenda, and that legislative agenda and part of the objectives that we have with the constitution review committee is actually supposed to ensure local government autonomy. As you know, in the 9th assembly and previous assemblies, there have been attempts to do that, but it didn’t quite work. So we, it’s part of the resolutions that we have.”
He went on to say that it is a collective decision of all 8 political parties represented in the 10th Assembly.
Further speaking on the importance of local government autonomy, Rotimi said, “I think it’s a landmark judgment, and it remains to be seen how it will play out. I think that the yearnings of Nigerians is, of course, for things to be decentralised, you know. People want to feel government in the grassroots, people want to feel their government close to them People want to be able to access those that can take immediate decisions. And if you look at the constitution, key issues that affect the lives of the people around education, primary health, and all those other kind of things are vested with the local government.”
Rotimi was then asked if he believes that this judgment will be properly implemented, to which he replied, “I don’t have any doubts about it, the Supreme Court is the Supreme, it’s the apex of court judgment, there’s no recourse after that. And for us, I believe that to a very large extent, if a decision has been taken, the Federal Government that instituted the case in the first place are the ones that administer the funds jointly. So they are the ones that have the powers to be able to ensure that starting out. I’m sure there can be a transitionary period to ensure that it’s done.
“The concern that I have however is that many states have local council development areas, and when the funds come in… I know that it’s a concern that how exactly is the tire going to meet the road in terms of the actual implementation of these things. Because of course, this judgment only recognises the extant 774 local governments and not all of the LCDAs.
“But overall, I think the spirit of it, which is in consonance with the position of the 10th Assembly House of Representatives that we were going to push for or we are even pushing. So, I won’t pre-empt what’s the content of this judgement, but I’m sure that in our constitution review process, there will be efforts to ensure that the constitution actually aligns very much so with this judgment.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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