1999 constitution: No party’ll influence review on LG financial autonomy-Reps

The House of Representative has said that the review of the aspect on local government financial autonomy in the 1999 constitution would not be influenced by the leadership of any political party in the country.
The House also disclosed that when the proposed review of the constitution was completed, no local government council would be able to access funds from the Federation Account unless it had elected council officials in place.
These were part of the submissions made by the Special Ad-Hoc Committee on the review of the 1999 constitution ( as amended) headed by the Deputy Speaker of the House, Yusuf Lasun, at a press conference held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Lasun said, “First and foremost, when we are presenting our constitution, parties don’t even come into it at all; it is not even APC or PDP. All over the world, centre of development should be at the grassroots, because we are talking about people. People don’t exist in a vacuum. They all come from small components of the society, from the family to the compound, to your village to your town.”
The Committee stressed that the local government defined an individual than the state, noting that no political parties in the country could be so powerful to have influenced the review of the constitution pertaining to council’s affairs.
It also lamented the non-existence of some local government in some parts of the states in the country and added that no council without elected officials would be able to obtain its fund from the Federal Government
“In fact, if you look at the structure of government, local government defines an individual even more than a state and so it is not the question of APC, PDP or APGA. We are talking about Nigeria’s constitution and we have discovered that over time, local government councils are no longer existing. It is not even a question of whether elections were conducted or not but we have considered that no local government will be allowed to access local government money anyhow, if there are no elected officers at the local government. ”
“This is part of what we want to do, if you don’t have any elected local government official, we will make sure you don’t get the money from the Federation Account and that is part of our operation,” it added.
The committee also maintained that the review of the 1999 constitution on local government had gone beyond party lines, saying, “Anytime election is conducted, then politics stops and governance starts. So, constitution is about governance; it is not about political parties.”