-May 29, 2024, News/Comments
A third republic Senator, Prof. David Iornem has congratulated President Bola Tinubu on his first year in office, noting that, Nigerians should support Mr. President’s courage and policy for a greater Nigeria. The Senator also used the medium to speak on trending issues-the suing of the 36 State governments by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, seeking an order from the Supreme Court, to prohibit state governors from unilateral, arbitrary and unlawful dissolution of democratically elected local government leaders for local governments among others. He also pin pointed that the way forward is by dialogue , stressing however, that the Local government’s issue is purely constitutional. Sen. Iornem spoke with our Editor, Mark Orgu, during the week. Immaculate Onyemma reports.
Excerpts
President Bola Tinubu’s one year in office
I want to congratulate my colleague, Senator Tinubu for his first one year in office. I know things are not easy, likewise governance too. I can say that he has spent one year to learn as President and we hope that the subsequent years will be spent in taking advantage of his knowledge of the first year and do more in office. I can see that some of his policies are in the right direction and should be commended for his courage so far, like the removal of fuel subsidy.
But senator sir, if we are to be sincere in rating President Tinubu’s government, like economic policy, , what ratio will you put it?
Like I said, he has used his first year to learn. So if you are to rate him now, it will be very unfair because it’s like taking someone who is doing a full year course and then using what is to be done in the full year to mark him in the first year. If we say the person has something like twenty-five percent, it may look like unfair but actually he has spent just twenty-five percent of his time. But in the issue of governance, if you have spent one year to learn the route and to discover the program that are on ground, the second year may be used to speed up the work in such a way that by the end of the second year, people will be singing praises and rating you like eighty percent or so. So, to give a percentage in the first year will not be very fair because if you measure it on the sufferings that people are going through, you will think that the President took us backward in terms of sustainability of families.
The AGF/Minister of Justice has dragged the 36 governors to Supreme Court over for local government autonomy and also suggesting that the state electoral commissions should be scrapped out while the national electoral commission should be left to conduct local government elections. Do you share such ideas?
I am sure that the Attorney-General knows that these are constitutional issues. Has he forgotten that it is in the constitution where the federal government allocation to local government is to go through the state through a joint account and the state governments are in charge of this joint account. This is spelt out in the constitution, so how does he expect Supreme Court to rule against the constitution? It is there in black and white, so I am wondering. In fact, Buhari’s approach which we were expecting order was more practical than this one where you will be expecting lawyers to go and argue and the government will also have lawyers, so you will not forget that it is in the constitution and the judges will not forget that it is in the constitution too. If they want to amend the constitution, let them amend it.
While you were in the senate, some of these issues would have popped out. What is the role of the senate in such issues especially the clamour for local government autonomous.
During our time in the senate, it was a Military era. This issue was not there, the military was sending money directly to the local governments. If you will recur or maybe you even will look around your own local government, you will see that the local governments were performing and they were doing things during military era. And it was only in River State that we had very big problem because local governments were just taking money and sharing. When the complaint came to our party Executives, we said, no, this is not what we are talking about, we are talking about using the money to develop their various local councils.
So does it mean that those who made the 1999 constitution did not realize that it was dangerous to have joint Local government and State account together.
To be fair to those who gave us the 1999 Constitution, they did not think governors will become nightmares in local government’s allocations, whereas the objective was for the development of local councils. That was the idea then. So, the passing of the money through the state government was a secure way of getting the money down to the local governments. That is what I think they thought but of course it has been proven that the greed of most state governors is so much that they take their own money and that of the local governments as well.
I think this issue can be approached from the point of engagement, engaging with the governments, and the local councils as well. So, a conference of the local government chairmen and state governors can be in place for a resolution to be taken and in such a conference, decisions should be reached to quickly amend the constitution, otherwise it will be very difficult to address the issues.
Very soon we will be celebrating Democracy on June 12. Based on your own analysis the local government seems to have been better during the military era. Whereas Democracy that is meant to give people more privileges, more opportunities and developments seems to have been thwarted by political greediness. So, based on this now, can we say in the area of the local government, democracy has thrived?
Democracy has not thrived, in fact, Local governments has been captured by the state governments. They have no freedom, a lot of them, there is no election, even if there is election and if it is PDP that is a governor, every councillor and chairman is PDP which means they don’t allow the local people to vote at all. If it is APC vis visa. I think the local government has suffered a lot in the democracy, because they are property of state’s capture
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