My immediate reaction to the imbroglio when it was brought to the public was that the major priority of President Muhammadu Buhari and by extension the National Assembly in the ongoing amendment is an area governors have for some reason protected very jealously and are not willing to let go of. Even the outgoing governors are confident of installing their ‘puppets’ and for that reason are still very interested in the ‘goldmine’. Yes, it is a contentious bill of autonomy for the local government areas.
If anyone is still in doubt as to whether the governors have enough power to stall the move towards granting autonomy to the local government areas in the states houses of assembly, let me remind such an individual that even a bill meant to grant autonomy to the legislative arm of government at the state levels failed to pass in many of the states’ parliament in 2017, the bill seeking autonomy for local government areas also suffered the same fate, therefore, my dear readers are free to make anything out of this poser.
Be that as it may, I wasn’t in any way surprised when the deputy president and the Senate and the co-chairman of the National Assembly’s joint committee on the review of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), Ovie Omo-Agege called a press conference to allege that state governors were holding the entire process to ransom to truncate it, invariably.
