Following the call by the National Assembly that local governments should be autonomous, the chairman of Ikole Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Mr. Adeyanju Adeyeye, has said that the call was “stale in the eyes of elected chairmen in Ekiti State.”
Adeyeye told the Nigerian Tribune on Monday that since their election about a year ago, they had been autonomous as elected council chairmen and charged other governors in the country to emulate Governor Ayodele Fayose in this regard.
According to Adeyeye, “the autonomy the National Assembly is seeking for local governments has already become a stale story in Ekiti State. Our governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has been doing it since we came into office as elected chairmen and he does not interfere with our positions as the executive chairman in our respective local governments in Ekiti State.”
He said: “I want other governors in the states to emulate him. He is the most transparent governor. He believes in the people and he believes that the power of the people is greater than that ofthe people in power. I urge other governors in the country, who have not conducted local government elections in their states, to do so because that is the government closest to the people.”
He commended the National Assembly for the call for local government autonomy and suggested that the federal lawmakers should take concrete steps to ensure that state where the local government were not autonomous should be compelled to comply with the constitution.
“I want other local governments to run the way what councils run in Ekiti because of the freedom we have. What the National Assembly said seems to have come from what Governor Fayose had already told us and had been doing. So, the federal lawmakers must go beyond making a call but finding ways of making non-conforming states to obey the constitution,” he stated.
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