The chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and Governor of Kwara state, AbdulRazaq Abdulrahman, on Friday disclosed that the 36 State Governors were comfortable with the ruling of the Supreme Court which granted financial autonomy and insisted that only elected officials should govern in the 774 local government councils of the country.
Governor Abdulrahman stated this shortly after a meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Governor who was joined by the Governir of Bauchi State Bala Mohammed and the Governor of Imo State Hope Uzodima told State House Correspondents that the ruling had indeed relieved a burden for the States.
He explained that his colleagues were also happy with the devolution of powers to the third tier of government.
The Kwara Governor said: “We welcome the ruling of the Supreme Court, compliance is given and our Attorney Generals have applied for the enrollment order, which we’ll study carefully.”
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“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 expend in bailing out local governments, and that’s the issue there.”He maintained that the NGF has requested for the enrolment of the judgment and will be reviewing it next Wednesday to decide the way forward.His words,” he added.
Governor Abdulrahman said that the NGF will meet next Wednesday, to look at issues in the Supreme Court wholly and then come up with a resolution on them.
“Like I said, we haven’t seen the enrolment of the court order and so we really don’t know what is in there”.As for Kwara State in particular, AbdulRahman said the judgment will not negatively affect it as the state government has not been tampering with local council funds.“It’s not going to affect the state we’ve never tampered with local government funds.
So it’s going to continue. What the local governments have to do is to manage themselves, especially with the oncoming minimum wage, to manage their affairs and make sure salaries are paid, traditional rulers get their 5% and those are the main issues,” he said.
He explained that they were at the State House to see the President on various issues. “We’ve seen the President on various issues from minimum wage, which he met with labor yesterday, the Supreme Court ruling and other national issues that concerns states as well. It’s omnibus,” he said.
