Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, on Tuesday, said there was no going back on local government autonomy, adding there would be no more joint account between local and state governments.

Tambuwal also told the members of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) that all necessary steps towards ensuring that local governments get their allocations directly from the Federation Account had been taken.

The speaker stated this during the sixth quadrennial national delegates’ conference of the union, held at City Hall, in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital.

He said the action would enable the local governments, being the closest to the rural dwellers, to provide dividends of democracy to the people at the grassroots, through the provision of social amenities, especially in the rural communities.

Tambuwal, therefore, pointed out that, only the local governments with duly elected officials would receive grants from the Federation Account, adding that the National Assembly had also decided to leave oversight functions for the state houses of Assembly.

According to him, as representatives of the people, we are strengthening the institution of governance at the local levels, and not creating yet another Federation unit.

In his remarks, the Nasarawa State governor, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, also lent his voice to the autonomy for governments at the grassroots, saying it would ensure good governance at the local levels.

Earlier in his keynote address, the National President of NULGE, Comrade Ibrahim Abdulkadir, had told the gathering that, “what we have today is a caricature of local government system where all manners of experiments, political and administrative are carried out. We make bold to say that this has retarded the development of this nation.

“The union wishes to lend its voice to that of millions of Nigerians to call on the members of the states Houses of Assembly to be on the part of history and confirm the bill being transmitted to them by their colleagues at the National Assembly which is the aggregate will of Nigerian people,” he added.

•Adapted from Nigerian Tribune. Photo shows Speaker Tambuwal.