Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, yesterday, threw his weight behind the growing calls for a single term for elected officeholders, arguing that any form of autonomy for local councils in the country is against the tenets of true federalism.
The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) proposed a single-parliament National Assembly because of the country’s dwindling revenue. Soludo, spoke at The Platform Nigeria, a programme by Lagos-based Church, Covenant Nation, to mark the 2024 Democracy Day.
The event with the theme, ‘Democracy and the Free Market Economy,’ featured former Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola; the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan-Kukah; former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, among others.
Soludo said: “Sometimes, these conversations about single term might begin to make some sense so that you fix it, whether you say four years or five years, six years, seven years, single term.
“So, you are not thinking about the next election once you finish getting into this. I face that all day in my state. You want to get into this (project), they say, ‘No, wait, you know you have an election.’ And I say, ‘No, let’s get it, if we get there, we get there and if we lose, we lose.”
Also, recall that there have been increased calls for local council autonomy in Nigeria. President Bola Tinubu has also supported the calls, and in May, the Federal Government sued the 36 state governors over alleged misconduct in the administration of local councils.
However, Soludo has a different view. He said: “Funny enough, more recently, some people are arguing for the autonomy of local councils, including some All Progressives Congress (APC) members, which would take Nigeria back many decades from what a true federation is about.
He said: “There is no federal system in the world where you have three federal units. If you look at counties in America where we copied (democracy), their local councils don’t go to the centre to collect money directly.”
He noted that each state must have the power to design the kind of local council system they want, arguing that this is what true federalism is about. Soludo noted that some of the Federal Government responsibilities in the Exclusive List should be ceded to the sub-nationals.
“Why not consolidate the National Assembly into one with no more than five representatives per state? We don’t need a National Assembly costing over N300 billion yearly to maintain. We don’t need it,” he said.