Governors Forum Welcomes Supreme Court Ruling on LGA Autonomy, to Convene Emergency Meeting

The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) has revealed that it will convene an emergency to review the recent Supreme Court judgement that granted financial autonomy to the 774 local governments in the country.

The Chairman forum and governor of Kwara State, AbdulRazaq AbdulRahman said the NGF  will meet to come up with resolution on the judgement.

AbdulRahman met with President Bola Tinubu on Friday in Abuja and told journalists that the governors welcome the judgement.

He 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 expend in bailing out local governments, and that’s the issue there.”

The Kwara State governor maintained that his government has never tampered with the allocation of local governments in his state.

On how the situation will be going forward in Kwara State, Governor Abdulrahaman said that,  “It’s not going to affect Kwara 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.

“Like I said, we haven’t seen the enrollment of the court order and so we really don’t know what is in there.

“The Forum will meet next Wednesday, to look at the issue wholly and then come up with a resolution on that.”