COMRADE LEONARD AFANGA WODAR
Our Constitution made provision for three tiers of Government, the Local Government, State Government and the Federal Government. The various tiers of Government were meant to function independently with some overlapping roles. This was constituted for the service of our people to bring about good governance for the development and growth of our great country.
These good objectives as put together by the founding fathers of our land had been highly abused where even the document, (the Constitution), that was expected to be a reference point every leader swore to uphold while in office, has been highly abused with the backing of both the lawmakers, the law interpreters and the law executioners.
We are all asking questions on where we have gone wrong as a nation without taking a thought and examine how we have treated a document that was expected to guide our existence (the Nigeria constitution).
In order not to digress from our point of consideration, the Local Government administration is the most cherished and important administration as compared to the other two; this is because the administration deals directly with every citizen in this country. For me, the other two are expected to just play supervision role to the Local Government administration. This is because whatever contract awarded by both Federal and State administration are in our Local Government Areas.
I hereby propose an open and ordinary amendment bill for our legislative houses for the three tiers of Government as follows:
1. We should revisit the Constitution and give the Local Government its independent status as a tier of Government.
2. I propose the reversal of the allocation sharing formula as it stands today that the Local Government should have the highest share followed by the States and the Federal Government.
3. That the role of Federal and State Government Ministries, Agencies and parastatals should be transfered to the Local Government administration. The award of contract by Federal Government and states administration should be carried out by the Local Government benefiting from those contract for effective monitoring of its execution, where the masses can easily hold them accountable from their actions. Each LGA should reproduce all Ministries, Agencies and parastatals as what we have in both Federal and States Government. These will help to develop and urbanize our LGAs, which will eventually impact the Federal and State needed development thus solving the present challenge in our country.
4. I advocate for the creation of more LGAs and reduction of the number of the present States we have as a country. To some extent, I propose a Regional Government to replace states since they are merely providing a supervisory roles on the Local Government administration.
5. I propose a mono camera legislation at the Federal level making up of 5 persons per region and Regional legislative Arms with one person per LGA and LGAs legislative as presently constituted.
6. I propose the tenure of LGA Chairmen to be two terms of 5 years each.
With my above analysis, if given a trial I believe Nigeria will fare better than what we have today.