LG autonomy: Senate has no opinion — Spokesperson

The Senate has said it would refrain from taking a position on the contentious issue of local government autonomy which has led to litigation between the Federal Government and the States.

Chairman Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Yemi Adaramodu, made the clarification while speaking with journalists in Abuja.
Checks revealed that in the suit marked SC/CV/343/2024, before the Supreme Court, the Attorney General of the Federation prayed the apex court for an order prohibiting state governors from unilateral, arbitrary, and unlawful dissolution of democratically elected local government executives.

Prince Lateef Fagbemi, ( SAN) in the originating summons prayed the Supreme Court for an order permitting the funds standing in the credits of local governments to be directly channelled to them from the Federation Account in line with the provisions of the Constitution as against the alleged unlawful joint accounts created by governors.

The AGF also sought an order of the court stopping governors from constituting caretaker committees to run the affairs of local governments as against the constitutionally recognised and guaranteed democratic system.

He also applied for an order of injunction restraining the governors, their agents, and privies from receiving, spending, or tampering with funds released from the federation account for the benefit of local governments when no democratically elected local government system is put in place.

The Senate spokesperson however maintained that the National Assembly was constrained from taking a position until the final pronouncement of the Supreme Court.

He said, “We might not be able to say much about it (LG autonomy) but then, we are talking about distributing funds to local governments.

“There are indices that inform the distribution of funds to local governments. Equality, land mass, social indices. So, when we talk about one of seven of the schools in Akure, that’s social indices. That is where they indicate how many hospitals.

“How many dispensaries? How many primary schools? How many junior secondary schools? Then population. So they distribute based on that. So, definitely there’s a local government that has only one primary school, and there’s another one that has 37 primary schools that are not going to get the same thing because of that formula. So just for education.

“But for local government autonomy, we’ll not discuss further until the Supreme Court rules accordingly.

“When the Supreme Court rules, then the National Assembly will know where to take it from, whatever the ruling is.”

Further checks revealed that the Supreme Court had since reserved its ruling.