•Threatens to name, shame lawmakers who vote against it
Udora Orizu
The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), yesterday, protested at the National Assembly and demanded that federal lawmakers support local government, judiciary and legislature autonomy, ahead of the electronic voting on the ongoing constitution amendments.
Members of the congress, chanting solidarity songs while displaying placards with various inscriptions, insisted that the lack of autonomy for the judicial arm of government, and local government as the third tier of government, was discordant with democratic principles.
Speaking to journalists, NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, said the advocacy movement was to enable workers to lend their voices to the constitutional amendment initiative of the National Assembly especially, on the issue of autonomy for local government, judiciary and legislative.
According to him, the Congress believed the initiative held the key to the strengthening of the country’s democracy, boosting the economy and improving the lots of Nigerian workers at the grassroots.
He, therefore, threatened that the Congress would name and shame any member of the National Assembly, who failed to vote in favour of the issue.
Wabba said, “On this day, we demand that members of the National Assembly that will be voting on the alteration of the Constitution, we are happy with what they have done, to guarantee the full autonomy of our local government, of the judiciary and the Parliament. We are aware that already, these decisions have been taken but we want to strengthen their hands, that in voting, it must be overwhelming. They must vote to actually guarantee the principle of separation of power. Both administratively, financially, and otherwise. We need to strengthen our institutions. These institutions are very critical.
“We are going to have a majority to support this local government autonomy at the National Assembly. The challenge has been actually in the states, where some gladiators that have actually benefited from siphoning the funds of the local governments, from also undermining the independence of the judiciary and are sitting on the resources of those two agencies don’t want the autonomy to be granted.
”This is just the first leg. We are going to the house of every member of the State House of Assembly. We are going to have zonal rallies, and we are going to have state rallies. Today, is just an advertiser, tomorrow is the main event, because the voting starts tomorrow. Each day, people continue to lament about the insecurity in our country, each day, each time people complain but nobody is taking a proactive action about the root cause. The root cause is that the local government system has fallen
“We want overwhelming voting. We don’t even want 99 per cent. We want the members of the National Assembly when they are voting tomorrow and next tomorrow both the House of Rep and the Senate on these issues, we want 100 per cent of their votes to guarantee the independence of the judiciary, to guarantee full autonomy for local governments and also to guarantee full autonomy to our legislature. This is what will strengthen our democracy. We are going to actually name each person that fails to vote in this light. We will name and shame them.”
