Yussuff Lasun, deputy speaker of the House of Representatives at the weekend stressed the need to resuscitate Local Government Councils which have gone into extinction due to the unwholesome activities of the State Governments.
To achieve this, Lasun who doubles as Chairman, House of Representatives’ Ad-hoc Committee on the review of the 1999 constitution, assured Nigerians of the National Assembly’s resolve to prioritize Local Governments’ financial autonomy in the ongoing constitution review.
Lasun, who spoke at a retreat of the special Ad-hoc committee on the review of the 1999 constitution, yesterday said though giving the local governments autonomy is “dicey” they are essential to democracy and development in any country, hence the need to ensure their financial independence.
“It’s very dicey because it will involve you to amend so many sections of the Constitution. But what I will assure you is we are going to push for financial autonomy.
“We’re concerned because, if you go all over the country today, local governments are no longer in existence, and that is not good for democracy, it’s not good for development and that is why it has become very difficult for the people of the grassroots to feel the impact of government.
“Local Government is an important part of democracy and once they cannot operate on their own, once they don’t have elected officials at the local government level, once they don’t have access to their own money, definitely, it would be difficult to do anything at that level.”
Lasun said all over the world, Local Government is responsible for almost 40 percent of development hence the need to push for financial autonomy.
According to him, the onus for constitution amendment lies with the state assemblies. ” If the state’s want the constitution to be amended, they would append their signature to what we pass at the National Assembly.
While answering questions on if the report of the Constitutional Conference held by the last administration would be included in the consideration of his committee, he said:
“We’re going to consider it, and we’ve done that. We’ve taken those that we think are reasonable and they’re going to form part of what we will consider here.”
The Deputy Speaker said at most, the reviewed constitution would be ready by May 2018.
“If we follow our programme very diligently, I think it cannot be earlier than February/ March next year. But I can assure you of one thing, we’re going to ensure that we achieve all these within the third year of this administration.
“This is because constitution review has a lot of political implications and we don’t want anybody to start reading meaning into whatever section of the constitution we want to amend at that point,” he observed.
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