Group Faults Constitution Amendment, Calls It Charade

A group, Gravitas Group for Good Governance, has faulted the recent Constitution Amendment by the National Assembly, describing it as charade.

The group, in a statement issued at the weekend by its Convener, High Chief Tola Adeniyi, frowned at the autonomy given to the local government administration, saying it has turned the third tier government to an appendage of the centre government and beggar.

According to the statement, “The fraudulently created 774 local government areas in Nigeria will now be reporting directly to the unitary government headquarters in Abuja. Councillors and chairmen will henceforth be ‘elected’ by agents of the dictatorship at the centre. Chairmen of LGAs will henceforth carry their beggar-bowls like the state governors to collect monthly allocation from Abuja.

“Nigeria is the only federation in the world where the centre creates or controls local government areas. Local governments, councils, counties are created by state/provincial governments all over the world. The Prime Minister of the Federation of Canada has no control whatsoever over the Toronto Metropolitan Council. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has no control over the London City Council. They derive their independence from the powers granted them by the state or provincial government.”

The group added that Nigerians cannot be deceived anymore, adding that: “The hidden agenda behind this local government booby-trap is to have the unitary government, which is the paymaster, to dictate the tune for piper-chairmen of local governments. More dangerous than that is the long-held desire to weaken all the constituents of the so-called federation and sustain a monster at the centre.

“The creation of many unviable states has already weakened indigenous nationalities while the creation of 774 mushroom local government areas has nailed the coffin of any opposition to arbitrary unitarism and fiendish oligarchy.”

Adeniyi also queried the National Assembly on the mode of becoming a citizen in Nigeria, saying: “In their ill-digested thought and scheming, all that is needed to become a Nigerian citizen and by extension an indigene of a fraudulently created local government is the possession of a useless paper devised through an equally fraudulently devised NIN number. What a scam!

“The constitution review for obvious reasons confers ‘indigeneship’ of any state on anyone who has spent five years in a state…so that such a person can vote and be voted for, and for any position in the adopted state.

“We have always held a strong view that knives can’t carve their own handles. The Senate or indeed the National and state Assemblies, and the entire fourth Estates of the Realm are creations of the Constitution. They are direct beneficiaries of a constitution. A child can’t create or recreate his own father. Constitution Amendments must pass through the rigours of a Plebiscite. Besides, Nigeria does not have a peoples’ constitution at the moment. What the country is operating with is a Military Government Decree! And it was a decree seriously screwed and shamelessly self-serving.”It noted that in no distant future, “if Rugarites achieve their objective, and if the madmen toying with nuclear bombs have not destroyed the world, those allocated free citizenships and indigene status to will overrun original indigenous nationalities and one would begin to see Sultan of Ile-Ife, Emir of Owerri, Emir of Ijebu-Ode, Emir of Oturkpo, and maybe Obi of Sokoto and Awujale of Kano. And Alhaji Gwandu Batagarawa will be Governor of Akwa Ibom.”

The group noted that it is very important, urgent, and imperative to challenge the composition of the Senate and the House of Representatives if credibility were ever to be attached to any vote taken in the chambers.

“Sokoto State used to have three senatorial seats. Kano State used to have three senatorial seats, while Lagos also had three. With the carving of Sokoto and Kano to six states, those two states, as amended, now have18 seats, and Lagos, with its verified 25 million people, is starved with just three seats! Just imagine the incredible disproportion,” it stated.

The Gravitas Group, therefore, called on all those “whose conscience is against this march to total domination and ruination of indigenous nationalities to rise up with courage and undo this calamitous bill. There is no sense in postponing the doomsday.”