The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the state House of Assembly under the leadership of the Right Honourable Adewale Olumide Egbedun of overstepping its constitutional boundary on the lingering issue of the local government allocations in the state.
For how long would the pliable House of Assembly continue to be a rubber stamp in the hand of the Governor Ademola Adeleke-led administration that has not been pretending that it is heading for perdition that will be imminently consigned to the dustbin of history?
Our concern as a forward-looking party with a rule of law as its bedrock since the inception of the formation of the progressive party is that it is unfortunate that the current lawmakers have refused to properly learn the rope of legislation since over three years of their membership of the hallowed chambers thereby constituting themselves as a corporate embarrassment to the entirety of the people of the state among the comity of other states in Nigeria.
When has it become the constitutional function of a House of Assembly to make itself an author of a resolution and letter when it is clearly stated in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that states are empowered to make legislations, not resolutions, not letters about local government finances?
The horrendous letters from the compromised Osun State House of Assembly to the United Bank for Africa over the subsisting logjam in the payment of the local government allocations in the state is a bunch of rubbish as they are not legislations but a needless exercise in resolution and letter writing which does not, in anyway, have the potency of any known law.
It is essential to point out that the Sections of the Constitution that the rubber stamp lawmakers cited clearly provide that after laws are made, the State House of Assembly can investigate any organization administering these laws.
Why has it escaped the memory of the visibly pliable Osun State House of Assembly that there is no LEGISLATION here? There is nothing to enforce or investigate.
The biased stooges of Governor Adeleke masquerading as lawmakers should atune their minds to the fact that the word ‘Organization’, as described in the Blacks Law Dictionary, means a department or a business. Local Governments are not departments or businesses. They are ‘GOVERNMENTS’. The only structure that falls within this definition of ‘ORGANIZATION’ is the Local Government Service Commission.
It is an aberration for State Houses of Assembly to seek to take over financial supervision of Local Governments in whatever form and under whatever guise. The spirit of the autonomy judgement of the Supreme Court of Nigeria guaranteeing financial freedom of Local Governments is to make this third tier of government a government in all its connotations.
In order to save itself from the avoidable collective corporate shame needlessly attracted to the law-abiding and well-informed people of Osun State, it is our considered golden advice, as a party, for the lithesome House of Assembly to, without further delay, withdraw the disgusting and odious letters and resolutions which are visibly out of their constitutional role.
e-SIGNED:
Mogaji KOLA OLABISI, Osun State APC Director of Media and Information.
