News: Constitution, House May Vote against LG Autonomy

The  House of Representatives may  today join the Senate in dumping the proposed  autonomy for  local government councils in the country.


The lower chamber of the National Assembly is expected to commence voting  on the report of its Ad hoc Committee on Constitution Review tomorrow,  but there are strong indications that the local government councils will not get the desired autonomy.

THISDAY checks revealed that the main opposition party, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), had already mobilised  the opposition camp to vote  against it.
However, the leadership of the House has insisted, that legislators should vote  in line with  the exact position   of their constituents as contained  in the report of the  Peoples  Public  Sessions.

The voting, which would be on the  electronic platform, would begin at 10a.m.

The process, THISDAY learnt, would be beamed live on national television.
Although, about 330 out of 360 federal constituencies voted for local government autonomy during the public hearings held across the country, the  leadership of the  ACN has not hidden its opposition to the idea.
It was gathered that lawmakers elected on the platform of the ACN have received specific instructions to vote against local government autonomy and to mobilise other colleagues to do same.

Minority Leader of the House and leader of the  ACN Caucus, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, said as  a progressive party, ACN intends  to act in the best interest of its  constituents.

“ACN is a progressive party and we intend to act in the best interest of our constituents and Nigeria as we have always done on all issues,” he said.

In the mean time, the  leadership of the House, which  had all along promoted  local government autonomy appears disturbed at the emerging scenario.

According to a source, the decision  to deploy the electronic voting platform for tomorrow's  voting was to ensure that every vote did not only count but traceable to the voter.

Speaker of the House, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, had last week urged the lawmakers to endeavour to come along with their copies of the Peoples Public Sessions as that would serve as a guide to each lawmaker during the voting.

The House had twice last week postponed the voting  on  the report. On Tuesday, the report was deferred, following confusion over the appropriate procedure to adopt in handling it.

The following day, it was also postponed in honour of Senator Pius Ewherido, a member of the Upper Chamber who died two weeks ago.