Cross River State senatorial aspirant, Thomas Ofem, has commended the leadership of the joint National Assembly led by Senator Ahmad Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila for passing five bills on devolution of powers.
The five bills, seeking to give states control of some sectors by taking them from the Executive to the Concurrent list, were part of the 68 proposed by the joint committee of the federal legislature on constitution review.
Ofem told The Guardian, yesterday, that with the passing of the bills, the National Assembly “is beginning to respond to the yearnings of majority of Nigerians” for people-centric laws.
This commendable action of the National Assembly, according to him, has demystified the call for restructuring and demonstrated that our nation can be restructured gradually through acts of parliament.
“All we need in the National Assembly are men and women with the vision and political will to make this country great again. I am particularly excited about the financial and administrative autonomy given to local councils and the removal of airports, railways and power generation/transmission from the Exclusive legislative list.” Ofem said.
“These bills, once passed into law, have the potential to catalyse economic development from thr bottom up. I call on the 36 Houses of Assembly to immediately ratify these bills and make them a part of the Nigerian constitution,” he said, adding that history would frown sternly on them if they fail to take the noble action for the country.
Ofem said there is a greater need for the continued decentralisation of government to the other tiers of government to reflect true federalism and for the rapid development of the states.
He cited roads construction in the country as burdensome on the Federal Government and called for the unbundling of the current structure to make it mandatory for states and Local councils to contribute to the construction of what is called federal roads
“Imagine that local councils are mandated to construct at least 10km each of roads tagged Federal Government roads in their domains and multiply that by the 774 councils in Nigeria, what is the total per year? A whopping 7740 kilometres,” Ofem noted.
He, however, expressed displeasure with the non-passage of the proposed gender bills that would have increased the opportunity of inclusion and representation of women in governance.
According to him, the proposed gender bills in the fifth Constitution Alteration Bills are basic human rights that should have been granted Nigerian women.
He said they would help address the current gender imbalance across the legislative arm of government in the country, while reducing under-representation of women in political office, and therefore should be reconsidered for passage.
