Stakeholders, across sectors, have called on the National Assembly and states Houses of Assembly to intensify efforts in ensuring full local government autonomy in the ongoing constitution amendment process come to fruition.
Local government autonomy, they said, will, in no measure, help combat the high level of insecurity, poor education funding at primary level, poor health infrastructure and enabling substantive administration, and importantly, it will take governance closer to the people for improved service delivery.
These positions formed part of the communiqué reached at the second OPEN Constitution Conversation Series themed: “Conversation on Local Government & Constitution Review,” convened at the weekend by OrderPaper Nigeria in collaboration with Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) Programme of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom.
Stakeholders at the virtual event included Sadiq Umar, chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Okoroafor Okechukwu, national legal adviser of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, and Adebola Bakare, lecturer, department of political science, University of Ilorin, all of whom served on the panel of speakers.
Other participants included former members of the National Assembly, including Samson Osagie, former minority whip of the House of Representatives, members of civil society organisations, legal community and the media.