APC, PDP Trade Tackles over Benue’s Voting against LG Autonomy

George Okoh in Makurdi

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition People Democratic Party(PDP) have started trading tackles over the failure of the passage of the local government autonomy bill, which required state assemblies to pass.

The Benue State APC chapter, said it “views with dismay, the rejection of the proposed autonomy bill for local governments by the Hon. Titus Uba-led Benue State House of Assembly. Votes by state houses of assembly are a key requirement in the constitutional amendment to grant autonomy for local governments in the country.”

According to APC, the vote against the autonomy bill by the assembly showed total disconnect between the assembly members and the plight of people at the grassroots, which they were supposed to represent.

In a press statement by the party’s publicity Secretary, Mr Dan Morgan Ihomun, the party said the development also “goes to show that members of the current Benue state house of assembly dominated by the Peoples Democratic Party have deliberately refused to have anything positive to do with history and posterity, which ironically is the desire of every public official.

“Amongst the three tiers of government, the federal, states and local governments, the local government system is closer to the people and its projects and policies have direct bearing and impact on the people in the grassroots more than the other two.

“Over the years, the local government system in Nigeria have been gagged, annexed and destroyed by the state governors across the country. The local governments have, therefore, been unable to carry out their roles as specified in the Constitution of Nigeria, thereby reducing their powers, performance and development at the grassroots.”

However, the PDP while countering APC’s allegations, said the APC was rather responsible for the failure to pass the LG autonomy bill and not Uba or the state assembly.

The PDP, through its publicity Secretary, Bemgba Iyortyom, viewed as most unfortunate, a statement credited to the local chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in which it accused the Benue State house of assembly and its Speaker, Titus Tyoapine Uba, of scuttling passage of the local government autonomy Bill.

“APC particularly sought in their statement to label Engr. Titus Uba as an enemy of the people over the matter, and this we understand to be motivated by politics being that he is the 2023 governorship candidate of our great party, and naturally a target for such attacks.

“Yet, the opposition party’s diatribe is pathetically ineffective as a weapon against the weight of facts, which places the blame squarely at its doorsteps for the failure of the local government autonomy bill.

“According to a March 5, 2018 report carried in Vanguard Newspaper, 15 different bills on constitution amendment were sent by Nigeria’s National Assembly to the 36 states houses of Assembly, including the Local Government Autonomy Bill, which only 10 states voted on, out of which 8, Kwara, Benue, Niger, Plateau, Bauchi, Cross River, Bayelsa and Ogun States, voted in support of, while two, Edo and Imo States, rejected it”

“The report further averred that Lagos and Rivers States, had not even worked on the Bill, while the remaining 24, which joined the other 10 states to transmit it to the National Assembly, said they had stepped the Bill down for further consultation,” it stated.

Conversely, the Benue PDP held that it was APC with majority control of the legislative arms of government, both at the national and state levels, that stood as an obstacle to local government autonomy.