The Senate has urged states to comply with the Supreme Court ruling on July 11, granting financial autonomy to local governments across the country.
The Senate also pledged to amend the constitution to fully empower local governments (LG).
The decision was announced by the Deputy Senate President, Senator, Jibril Barau, after a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, where lawmakers discussed attempts by some state governments to undermine the judgement of the Apex court.
Senator Tony Nwoye raised concerns about state governments using their legislatures to enact laws that violate constitutional provisions and the judgement on LG autonomy.
Nwoye’s motion, co-sponsored by 12 other senators, highlighted state governments’ tactics to circumvent the ruling by creating joint accounts that control LG funds.
The motion says, “Further concerned that the modus Operandi of subverting this financial autonomy of Local governments by state governments through their houses of assembly is to insert clauses in their laws requiring the Local Governments upon receipt of their allocation from Federation Account to remit all or majority or substantial portion of their allocation to a dedicated account which the State Governments will keep, control, manage or disburse for them using some nomenclatures like state/LGA joint account, state/LGA Consolidated revenue account, Local Government Joint Security Trust account etc.”
In July, the Supreme Court declared that state governors cannot hold onto funds meant for LGs and cannot dissolve democratically elected local government councils.
The Apex court ruled that such actions violate the 1999 Constitution.