From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja

 

Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege has disclosed that the Local Government Autonomy bills are the biggest challenge to ongoing review of the 1999 Constitution. 

He stated this while speaking to State House correspondents after a private visit with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He dismissed criticisms about the constitutional review process being an exercise on futility saying State Houses of Assembly had failed to vote on the amendment bills on local government autonomy passed and transmitted to them for concurrence.

He, however, said despite the challenge posed by  governors and state houses of assembly who are holding back their support,  the National Assembly was optimistic the bills would be passed.

“I can tell you that at the National Assembly, we have fulfilled our part of that bargain, what is now left is to get the concurrence of 24 Houses of Assemblies of the states. That is also a Section 9 obligation, but this time, imposed on the State Houses of Assembly. 

“As we speak, my mistake, if I knew this question was going to come up, I probably would have spoken with the Clerk of my committee before walking in here, but I know that notwithstanding the brouhaha over this, the states have been meeting and they’ve been taking positions on most of these bills. 

“I don’t know how many right now, but the bigger challenge we have, frankly it’s not so much all of the bills, it’s the bill dealing with the local government autonomy, both financial and administration, those are the two critical issues. 

“But there are other bills, most of them have passed, we’ve gotten more than the required number of Houses of Assembly for some of those bills, but what matters to us, which is the priority to us, which is a big priority of President Buhari is this issue of the local government autonomy and that’s where we’re having challenges and that is because of the position of some of the governors, who believe that they should not be in support of this. 

“But my personal view is that the obligation should be on the State Houses of Assembly and not on the governors and I would have expected that the State Assemblies will show some independence in making some of the decisions, but it does appear that way. I can’t fault them for working with their state governors in taking these positions, but we believe that with time, we’ll be able to resolve this. 

“The President of the Senate has reached out to some of the governors, most especially through my friend, the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, to reach out to his colleagues. Kaduna for instance, has already voted and has transmitted. Of course, we won one, we lost one”, he said. 

The National Assembly on March 29, 2022, transmitted 44 Constitution alteration bills to the 36 state Houses of Assembly for concurrence.

Speaking on his chances at the governorship polls considering Delta state is PDP, he said: “That is a very serious misconception to tag Delta State a PDP state. Delta is very ripe for the taking and we are determined to achieve this. We have been going round each local government, ward by ward, making the case drawing the attention of the people of the state to the mis-governance and lack of performance on the part of not just Okowa but the PDP led-administration in the past 14 years.”