Ignorance is a devastating disease. The half enlightened membership of the Senate rose to threaten enthronement of supposed "Local government council autonomy" to stop the state Governors from using Caretaker Committee to run the local government councils.
Jesus Christ in his earlier mission to save
mankind from perdition, had an occasion to express anger on the hypocrisy
of religious leaders who readily find
faults by their followers asked them to first of all remove the log in their
eyes before convicting their adherents of sins
. In
like manner, the itching palmed members of the Senate who created the
impression that they are losing sleep about the need of the state Governors to
conduct local government council election in sync with section 7 of the
military Decreed 1999 Constitution (contraption) supposedly and deceptively referred to as "amended"
, threatened to request the president to stop releasing monthly Statutory
Revenue Allocation to the state governments where the local government councils
are not run by democratically elected chairmen and councillors.
First and foremost, the Senate should know that Nigeria is not practicing Constitutional Democracy whereby there ought to have been two tiers of government as practiced in sane and sanitized Federations that practice federal system of government.
Even during the first republic with the 1960 Constitution
fashioned by the selected representatives of ethnic nationalities in a
Constitutional Conference held both in Nigeria and Britain had Two Tiers of
government viz: Federal Government, and Regional Governments. The issue of
Local Administration was purely under the authority of the Regional Governments
and not the federal government.
It was
the aberrant military autocrats that Decreed local government council as a
Third Tier of government contrary to the principal and federal system of
government as obtained the world over. More importantly, the extant
Constitution was not fashioned by the selected representatives of ethnic
nationalities and therefore, it is fundamentally flawed and a fraudulent meta
legal document, a contraption, to say the least. That's why there has been a
nationwide clarion calls for the restructuring of the lopsided Federation to
reinvent the inexorable principles of federal system of government.
Fact remains that the National Assembly members have no moral standing to question the state governors on running the local government councils with Caretaker Committee whose tenure expire every three months and the tenure is renewable or a new set appointed.
If Nigeria is serious about True Fiscal Federalism, there
should be immediate Restructuring of the lopsided Federation with the six
geopolitical zones as the new Federating Units and the Federal Government and
the Geopolitical Zones (as Regional Governments) will make up a Two Tiers
system of government as obtained in the suspended 1963 Republican Constitution.
In conclusion, the National Assembly should stop fooling themselves by threatening the state governors for running the local government councils with Caretaker Committee. Do the proper thing by dumping the military imposed pseudo federal arrangements and enthrone proper federal structure with two tiers of government viz: Federal Government and State governments.
In the alternative, the country can be
restructured by using the Six Geopolitical Zones as Regional Governments which
will explore and exploit the natural and mineral resources within their
jurisdiction to run their respective Governments to kickstart realistic
socioeconomic growth and development in the country.
Polycarp
Onwubiko, media commentator, writes from Awka, Anambra State.
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