Autonomy Of LGAs Rests In The Hands Of The People – Femi Gbajabiamila

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila has come out to say that the realization of autonomy of the local government councils is dependant on the people.

He recently revealed this in Abuja on Monday at a two-day capacity training for the newly elected councillors and local government council chairmen from Aniocha/Oshimili federal constituency of Delta State.

According to him, the autonomy of the third tier of the government rests on the people at the grassroots, and the national assembly once successfully amended the constitution to grant autonomy to the local government in the time past, but was turned down by the state as they couldn’t muster the required two-third majority of the votes.

He added Nigerian lawmakers will keep doing what needs to be done according to the constitution.

His words, “The Minority Leader of the House is here with his councilors of his local government, from his constituency to train them on leadership.”

“We talk about training all the time but who are we training and what are we training them for? This is leadership training for councilors and I thank Elumelu for thinking about this.”

“This institute has been in the making for a long time and I believe at the end of the exercise, they would have received a lot of education on what leadership is all about.”

“Some people are born leaders, some learn to acquire leadership but either way, whether you’re born a leader or acquire it, you have to go do that training exercise to be able to horn your experiences and qualities you have in order to maximize your skills.”

“And what better place to start than with the local government councilors. As you all know, that is the bedrock of our society.”

“It’s not for us as legislators to do that. I’m sure you’re surprised but it’s actually for the people to address, the reason being, we have a constitutional amendment.”

“We will throw it to the people and they will make their decision. We did it the last time but we went back to the states and we couldn’t get the 2/3rd.”

“There’s a process. We followed due process. We amended it last time but 2/3rd of the States didn’t not agree with us. So it’s the people that will decide whether they want autonomy or not.”

“We will do what we need to do as the constitution provides.”