Constitution amendment: Taraba Assembly fails to pass LG autonomy bill

Taraba State House of Assembly, yesterday, failed to pass the bill to alter the Constitution, which seeks to abrogate the state/local government joint account and give the third tier financial autonomy.

The House, which passed 10 of the amendments, referred the local government autonomy bill alongside four others to the House Ad Hoc Committee on Constitution Amendment for further legislative work. 

The local government autonomy bill, which is third on the list of the bills sent to the state Houses of Assembly for concurrence, also seeks to empower each local government council to maintain its special account to be called Local Government Allocation Account.

If passed, alongside 23 other state Houses of Assembly, the bill would have made it mandatory for all allocations due to the local government council to be paid directly from the federation account.

… passes immunity bill

However, members unanimously passed the bill seeking to provide for the funding of the state Houses of Assembly directly from the consolidated revenue fund of the state as well as immunity of members in respect of spoken or written words during plenary.

Speaker of the House, Abel Diah, applauded members for the work done on the constitution amendment bills sent to them by the National Assembly for concurrence.

He explained that the five bills referred to the committee contained issues that required the inputs of the people of Taraba State, assuring that the House will take a position on them after hearing from the people of the state. “There is no genuine process of restructuring than this constitutional amendment we are doing and I want to urge Tarabans to lend their voices on the bills we referred to them, to be part of the process,” he said.

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