Nigerian governors, under the aegis of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum (NGF), have commended the Supreme Court ruling for granting local governments and LGs fiscal autonomy, News About Nigeria reports.
Chairman of the Forum and Governor of Kwara State, AbdulRazaq AbdulRahman, disclosed this while speaking to newsmen at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Friday.
He stated that the governor’s are happy with the judgement, adding that it has relieved the state governors of a burden.
AbdulRahman stressed that the governors are happy with the devolution of powers to the third tier of government.
He added that the NGF has requested the enrollment of the judgement and will be reviewing it next Wednesday to decide the way forward.
“We welcome the ruling of the Supreme Court, compliance is a given and our Attorney Generals have applied for the enrollment order, which we’ll study carefully.
“But by and large, governors are happy with the devolution of power in respect to local government autonomy. It relieves the burden on governors.
“Our people really don’t know how much states expense in bailing out local governments, and that’s the issue there.”
“The forum will meet next Wednesday to look at the issue wholly and then come up with a resolution on that.”
“Like I said, we haven’t seen the enrollment of the court order and so we really don’t know what is in there,” he stated.
As for Kwara State in particular, AbdulRahman said the judgement will not negatively affect it as the state government has not been tampering with council funds.
“It’s not going to affect the state; we’ve never tampered with local government funds. So it’s going to continue,” he stated.
