Mr Francis Orogu, Nasarawa State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has lauded the Federal Government (FG) for taking legal action against the governors of the 36 states over the autonomy of Local Government Areas (LGAs).
The PDP Chairman stated this in an interview with newsmen on Wednesday in Lafia.
The federal government had recently dragged the governors to supreme court seeking and order to guarantee the autonomy of the LGAs.
The FG urged the court to issue an order prohibiting state governors from embarking on unilateral, arbitrary and unlawful dissolution of elected LG officials.
According to Orogu, if the federal government succeeds at the court, the LGAs would have serious relief and more development would take place at the third tier of government.
He further said that if LGAs are autonomous, more qualified persons would be interested in contesting elective positions at the local level because they would have resources for development.
“Ordinary the constitution was supposed to be amended to give LGA autonomy.
Francis Orogu PDP Chairman, Nasarawa State
“Unfortunately, it will be difficult to successfully ament the constitution and give LGAs autonomy under the present system because most of the houses of assemblies are robber stamps of the governors,” he added.
On the assessment of the performance of the federal and state governments one year anniversary, the PDP Chairman said he reserve his comment for now for obvious reasons.
He however, said that the impact of the policies and programmes of the federal government is harsh on the people in the last one year.
The chairman urged leaders, especially at the state level to desist from embarking on white elephant projects that do not have any positive impacts on the lives of the people.
He said that the government should open up rural communities and ensure security to enable farmers go to farm freely and transport their products to the market.
Orogu further said that the PDP had commenced membership revalidation exercise in the state to clean up their register.
“We are to removed the names of those who had died, those who left the party and to also register new members.
“This exercise would be carried out simultaneously across all the 147 electoral wards of the state,” Orogu added. (NAN).