By Cross Udo, Abuja
A former governor of Anambra State, Senator Chris Ngige, has called on the Supreme Court to revisit its judgment on local government financial autonomy, saying it undermined the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).
Ngige, who was the Minister for Labour and Employment under President Muhammadu Buhari (from November 2015 to May 2023), contended that the judgment attempted to completely knock down Section 7 of the Constitution, which he said firmly puts the local government areas under the control of the states.
Besides the political consequences, he recalled that the same Supreme Court had earlier in 2006 made a pronouncement, warning the Federal Government against dictating to the states how to spend local government funds accruable to them.
Ngige recalled the previous Supreme Court ruling under Justice Mohammed Uwais, which was made in a case filed by three state governments, Abia and through their attorney generals, challenging then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Local Government Account Monitoring Committee Act 2005.
Ngige, in a statement issued by his Media Office in Abuja, spoke over the weekend in Enugu as the Guest Lecturer at the 29th Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Scientific Conference of the Association of Urological Surgeons, Nigeria (NAUS).
Speaking on the topic of “Local Government Administration and Primary Healthcare,” Ngige, a medical doctor and health system administration specialist, said he does not support the direct payment of federal allocations to local governments without statutory first-line deductions for salaries and wages of local government workers, pensions and gratuities, traditional rulers’ entitlements, and customary court allowances.
Citing his experience as a governor, he recalled that council chairmen between 1999 and 2002 owed several months of salaries, allowances, pensions, and gratuities not only in Anambra State but also in almost all the states of the federation.
He said most past council chairmen craved for the acquisition of choice estates in Abuja, Lagos, and even London, at the detriment of public health centers and schools in their area, where teachers were owed several months’ arrears of salaries and allowances, stressing that some chairmen even proved to be more corrupt than the Governors.
