By Egena Sunday Ode
The Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and Governor of Kwara State, AbdulRazaq AbdulRahman, on Friday said the state chief executives are comfortable with the Supreme Court judgment that granted fiscal autonomy to the local governments.
He stated this while to newsmen before a meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja, noting that the ruling has relieved the governors of a burden and that they are happy with the devolution of powers to the third tier of government.
The NGF boss said: “We welcome the ruling of the Supreme Court, compliance is a given and our Attorney Generals have applied for the enrollment order, which we’ll study carefully.
“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 expense in bailing out local governments, and qthat’s the issue there.”
AbdulRahman maintained that the NGF has requested for the enrollment of the judgment and will be reviewing it next Wednesday to decide the way forward.
“The forum will meet next Wednesday, to look at the issue wholly and then come up with a resolution on that.”
“Like I said, we haven’t seen the enrollment of the court order and so we really don’t know what is in there,” he stated.
As for Kwara State in particular, according to the governor, the judgment will not negatively affect it as the state government has not been tampering with 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 stated.
The NGF boss, who was joined by his Imo State counterpart, Hope Uzodimma, informed that they were in the Presidential Villa to see the president on various issues, adding:
“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.”
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