National Assembly has on Tuesday granted financial and administrative autonomy to all the local governments across Nigeria.
The autonomy was granted when the lawmakers voted on 68 Constitution Amendment bills at their plenary. The voting was done electronically.
Both chambers of the National Assembly during voting on the Constitution Amendment voted in favour of Local Government administrative autonomy as a tier of government and guarantee their democratic existence and tenure.
In the House of Representatives, the bill to create a special account through which funds for local governments will be paid directly from the Federation Account had 257 ‘YES’ votes while nine persons voted ‘NO.’
For the local government autonomy, 258 members of the House of representatives voted ‘YES’ while 15 voted ‘NO’.
In the Senate Chamber, local government financial autonomy had 92 ‘YES’ votes and two ‘NO’ votes.
Also in the Senate Chamber, local government autonomy, had 258 ‘YES’ votes and 15 ‘NO’ votes.
Local government administrative autonomy had 88 ‘YES’ votes, four ‘NO’ votes.
National Assembly made this vote less than 24 hours after the leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) led a protest to the National Assembly, to demand overwhelming votes in favour of autonomy for the local government and the judiciary.
