Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, chairman, Senate Committee on Information, in this interview monitored on Channel Sunrise Daily by SEYI JOHN SALAU insists that autonomy for local governments is in the best interest of citizens at the grassroots. He also touches on some other aspects of the 1999 Constitution being amended by the National Assembly. Excerpts:
May we know the talk about this distributable crude account; what is it about?
Well the point here is this; you know it fell under the strengthening of the local government system. What we are saying is, if the federation account that is entire fund that is coming into the federation account at the federal level, that is the distributable account. I think we are now trying to learn from the past mistakes where we had very large pool of money and we just went on and shared everything, here we are today suffering as a nation. What the National Assembly is trying to do is to say that when funds are available we should reserve 10 percent in this case, and that 10 percent is what we now look at until about after five years before we go back to it to see if there is any need to share. This is to provide a kind of cushion away from what we experienced when we had so much money and then everybody is now crying because the funds are no longer there.
It is commendable in some areas, but then we also see that somehow as a country, we have found a way to save money, say fiscal account, there is also a sovereign wealth fund. I want to know what we should be looking at.
These are the issues we seek to address rather than have the people going back and forth as far as this issue of excess crude account is concerned, that is why we are saying let us introduce a sense of modality into our mode of doing things as a country, but there is a cushion so that at the end of the day, after five years we can go back to see what we can do, so that there will be that cushion and I think this is the thing with all the constitutional battle.
Local government autonomy is one area the house members are focusing on, what is the feedback from your constituents in that regard?
I think it is a very welcome development as far as I am concerned and as far as the National Assembly is concerned; we are all extremely happy that this is coming and at some point we will go back to see. The National Assembly has been fully supportive but what normally happens is that when you go back to the same grassroots and when you see the members of the state Houses of Assembly rejecting it, of course, you know the interplay, and I feel this is where the issues are. The interplay with their relationship with state government is where the issues come because for example, the last time we were saying that the state Houses of Assembly should have autonomy to do what they want to do and that their funding should be given to them, that way they have the money to be able to do what they want to do; that is the beauty of democracy, but some state Houses of Assembly even rejected that, and I think that is the interesting dynamics in our political arrangement. The consensus now is showing that even the state governors, many of them are beginning to see reasons why we should strengthen those laws, and it is in our overall interest to do that because going forward, if you look at what we are experiencing you will come to agree with me that even the issue of unemployment which we were trying to attempt, it is something that can be taken care of, because we have 774 local governments across the federation and each of the 774 local governments is going to be able to create the avenues for our youths to have things to do. Just take a problem, when you multiply it, you can see what the multiplier effect is going to do because these are development centres and so I think all of us as stakeholders at various levels will begin to see that there is a big relationship between the various challenges we are facing now as a country, which are currently happening at the local level and the problem are going to affect those who are living at the so-called city centre and I think the earlier we recognise that the better for us, and the best way we can tackle that is by ensuring that that level of government is strengthened and given the right to have a good capacity, because many speakers will tell you they do not have the capacity but how can they have the capacity when you cannot do what you want to do, it is a utility issue. When you do not use something even when you have the skill, when you do not use the skill, it will be obsolete and experts will tell you, you need the skills.
Some people are protesting against returning primary education to the local governments; particularly, the National Union of Teachers has been very unhappy about the plans to make local government autonomous in this regard?
I do not think they were unhappy, they are only raising their concern and we have interfaced with the leadership, with the president of the NUT, with the president of NULGE itself and all the various stakeholders at that level. We had interface with the NUT at a retreat in Lagos, and then they took that to Abuja the following week, I was in that meeting and the thing is that we need to understand what the issues are. They are not and I challenge anybody to counter this, they are not against strengthening the local government or giving the local government autonomy. But what they are saying is that they have fears about payment of teachers’ salaries, because teachers at that level constitute the largest workforce and so they are saying if this autonomy goes through what happens to payment of teachers’ salaries because we have had similar experiences in the past where teachers work without salaries as a result of similar situation. The point is, what they want is to interface with them in the current arrangement we are making; we are integrating amendments to guarantee the fact that teachers’ salaries will be paid by direct source deduction, and I think they are in agreement with that as at the time we had this meeting, they are in complete agreement with that saying that we should guarantee that payment of teachers’ salaries, and I do know that payment of teachers’ salaries is both by the state government and local government, so we have taken care of that sphere, and we believe the autonomy that is being talked about for local government is on the way, because all the stakeholders are in support of it.
You are suggesting also that if there is no election for local government chairman for instance, that there will be no money allocated to that local government?
That is to deepen our democratic process. If you give a free chop to people definitely, they are going to use it the way they want to. We are not punishing the people, what we have done now is to put the responsibility on the doorstep of those who are given the authority to make sure these things happen. The constitution says democratically elected government at the local government level is guaranteed by this constitution, now this same constitution is saying if any state governor; as it is now most states have been without any democratically elected local government representatives for the past two years, what they have is caretaker and that is not good for democracy because he who pays the piper detects the tone. So what we are saying is that that in itself is what is denying citizens at that level the rights to participate in democratic governance, the right to be part of the process to choose the person they want to lead them and determine their own future.
Often times, people hide under the law and sometimes what you intended with the law is not what turns out to be at the end of the day, have you thought of the implications of what could happen if in the event that local government elections are not conducted, when we have undemocratically elected local government chairmen and the people in that area have to suffer as a result of not having elected officials?
Your call is true but in every situation you look at the other implications but the truth remains that by the provisions of this constitution, you can imagine if today it is decided that there will not be election in a state by the state governor and Mr. President now puts a vote for an emergency rule, which the constitution allows to ensure that somebody is there in the state, am sure the citizens in that state will rise up. Now the provision here is that by making this amendment we are empowering the people to know that the right to have their democratically elected chairmen is guaranteed, and if the state authority decides to do otherwise they now have a right to challenge that person until the case get to court, and I think that is the process that can take us away from the current system where people just come in have caretaker committees and then nothing happens at the local government level, but the provisions we are having now are adequate and sufficient enough to ensure and guarantee that at the local government level there are democratically elected government.
Are you considering the fact that some of the recommendations in the constitutional amendments would have to go through the state assemblies and the governors for these amendments to take effect?
I think maybe, perhaps, let me take us back, if you remember when this 8th Assembly came on board we made public to the Nigerian public our legislative agenda and in that agenda we clearly stated our objectives, which are among others, to ensure that we deepen democracy, to ensure that we promote good governance, to also look at our own operations considering the fact that the constitution says we are to regulate our own office, we believe we must also with respect, and try to see what we are doing right or wrong. So within this context we have promised to abide by constitution amendments; the difference now is to go back to our objectives which we can use to measure ourselves. Now, the Senate president said based on what happened last time, during the 7th Senate; they treated the amendment as one bill and because there was disagreement with one or two provisions everything was stopped including the bad paper and the good, everything was stopped, but this time around we took everything differently.
