State Assembly has no authority over LG funds – Osun APC

…Accuses lawmakers of overstepping constitutional limits LG allocations

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the state House of Assembly, under the leadership of the Right Honourable Adewale Olumide Egbedun, of overstepping its constitutional boundary on issues relating to local government allocations.

In a statement signed by Mogaji Kola Olabisi, Director of Media and Information of Osun APC, the party described the actions of the lawmakers as a “corporate embarrassment” and criticised their ongoing interference in local government finances, arguing that the House lacks legal authority to control or investigate the management of these funds.

The statement reads partly: “Our concern as a forward-looking party with a rule of law as its bedrock since the inception of the formation of the progressive party is that it is unfortunate that the current lawmakers have refused to properly learn the rope of legislation since over three years of their membership of the hallowed chambers thereby constituting themselves as a corporate embarrassment to the entirety of the people of the state among the comity of other states in Nigeria.

“When has it become the constitutional function of a House of Assembly to make itself an author of a resolution and letter when it is clearly stated in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that states are empowered to make legislations, not resolutions, not letters about local government finances?

“The horrendous letters from the compromised Osun State House of Assembly to the United Bank for Africa over the subsisting logjam in the payment of the local government allocations in the state is a bunch of rubbish as they are not legislations but a needless exercise in resolution and letter writing which does not, in anyway, have the potency of any known law.

“The biased stooges of Governor Adeleke masquerading as lawmakers should attune their minds to the fact that the word ‘Organization’, as described in the Blacks Law Dictionary, means a department or a business. Local Governments are not departments or businesses. They are ‘GOVERNMENTS’.

The only structure that falls within this definition of ‘ORGANIZATION’ is the Local Government Service Commission.”The APC further argued that the State Assembly’s attempts to supervise local government finances run contrary to the spirit of the Supreme Court’s autonomy judgement, which guarantees financial independence for local governments as a third tier of government.

The party urged the House of Assembly to withdraw the letters and resolutions it described as “disgusting and odious” to avoid further “avoidable collective corporate shame” for the people of Osun State.