John Adams, Minna

Facts have emerged as to why the controversial Local Government Autonomy Amendment Bill could not scale through at both the states’ Houses of Assembly and the National assembly.

Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Alhaji Ahmed Marafa Guni, during an attractive session with newsmen, in Minna, on Tuesday, disclosed that state governors, Emir and the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) were against the Bill seeing the light of the day.

Guni said the three major critical stakeholders in the local government project in the country stoutly rose against granting the autonomy requested for by local government chairmen from across the country.

According to Guni, who is the Chairman of Northern Speakers Forum, he pointed out that these stakeholders were unanimous in the rejection of the autonomy Bill.

He said the NUT at the state and national levels opposed the granting of the autonomy because according to them “it would cripple primary school education in the country”.

“The NUT at all levels are afraid that If the autonomy was given, management of primary schools and in particular payment of primary school teachers would be seriously negatively affected.”

He said they hinged their position on a previous experience where primary school teachers in many states of the federation did not receive their salaries in some cases for more than three years.

Guni said the traditional rulers also expressed similar fears adding that the state governors in their opposition to the passage feared that most governors would not be able to perfectly run their governments because they would not have enough resources to so do as the joint account would also be stopped by the passage of the Bill.

“To get the Local Government Autonomy Bill passed the speakers conference toyed with the idea of reviewing the Revenue Allocation Formulae but ” we ran into a brick wall because we were told that we did not have such powers” Alhaji Guni said.

“We eventually met at the level of the conference of speakers in the country we also met with the national assembly and decided that for now we should allow the law to stay the way it is”.

Marafa Guni however said only two or three state house of assembly speakers did not oppose the local government autonomy bill because ” governors in these states had already granted complete independence to their local governments”.

He appreciated President Muhammadu Buhari for ” having the courage to assent to the autonomy of legislatures bill saying that the action had shown the president as a true democrat pointing out that history would never forget the action taken by the president to stabilise democracy in the country.