The House of Representatives is considering a bill for the deportation of the local government as a constitutionally-recognized and third tier of government.
The bill was read for the first time yesterday and Sponsored by Mr. Solomon Bob (PDP, Rivers).
The sponsor noted that in Nigeria, a culturally diverse country, powers should be vested in the state Assembly
“The Bill seeks to remove Local Government as a tier of government in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and vest their creation, powers and funding exclusively in the state Houses of Assembly following the principle and practice of true federalism in a culturally diverse and territorially extensive country like Nigeria.”
According to him, powers should be shared between the federal government and central government, disregarding the “anomalies” enshrined in the Constitution, and should not be a subject for federal legislation.
” The Bill will go some good way towards fixing the many centripetal anomalies in the 1999 Constitution.”
“A federal constitution evinces power-sharing only between two tiers of government— that is, the federated states and the central government.”
“Local government is normally the babies of the federated states which are at liberty to create as many as they can fund based on their developmental goals or needs, and they’re not, and should not, be a subject for federal legislation.”
He added that establishing and documenting local governments in the federal constitution “gives it an air of immutability as no new ones can realistically be created for obvious reasons, while also denying the necessary flexibility to drive development and performance at that level.”
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