LG Autonomy: Ensure Verdict Is Implemented, Let Councils Flourish – Onanuga

Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, has urged State Governors to comply with the Supreme Court’s verdict granting full autonomy to Local Governments Areas (LGAs).

He made this known in a post via X on Thursday.

Following the Supreme Court’s verdict that mandates that LGAs should receive their monthly federal allocations directly into their accounts, he advised the Governors not to wave aside the financial autonomy granted to the local councils.

Recall that apart from ordering that monthly allocation should be sent directly to the LGs, the Supreme Court also ruled that LGAs being administered by non-democratically elected chairmen should not receive allocation.

With the verdict, several LGAs spread across 21 states would not receive July allocation from the Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC.

They include Jigawa, Rivers, Anambra, Kwara, Imo, Zamfara, Benue, Bauchi, Plateau, Abia, Enugu, Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Yobe, Ondo, Osun, Delta, Akwa-Ibom, and Cross River.

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While some of the States had before now fixed dates for LG polls, some others have no immediate plan to put up democratically elected chairmen.

However, Onanuga said: “The Nigerian state governors should not see the Supreme Court judgement granting financial autonomy to the local councils as an affront.

“The governors must allow the councils to breathe and flourish again. It is in their best interest to ensure that the judgement is fully implemented in their domains.”

He pointed out that although Local Government is a crucial tier of government, State Governors have undermined and made them ineffective in the past 25 years.

“The local council is a very important third tier of government, and its emasculation by the governors in the last 25 years has been at the root of the poverty and insecurity we have all over our country,” Onanuga added.

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