Soludo supports single term for politicians and rejects LG autonomy.
Governor of Anambra State Chukwuma Soludo on Wednesday backed the growing demands for elected officials to serve a single term, but he maintained that any kind of local government autonomy in the nation goes against the principles of real federalism.
Given the nation’s declining revenue, the previous governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) suggested a single-parliament National Assembly.
Speaking at The Platform Nigeria, a programme organised by the Lagos-based church Covenant Nation to commemorate 2024 Democracy Day, Soludo served as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2004 to 2009.
Among the speakers at the ‘Democracy and the Free Market Economy’ event were former Minister of Works Babatunde Fashola, Bishop Matthew Hassan-Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, and former House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara.
“These discussions about single terms sometimes start to make some sense so that you fix it, whether you say four years or five years, six years, seven years, single term,” Soludo added.
You are not considering the next election once you have finished this. In my state, I deal with that all day long. No, wait, you know you have an election, they say, when you want to join this (project). “No, let’s get it; if we get there, we get there; if we lose, we lose.”
Demands for local government autonomy in Nigeria have grown. Supporting the calls, President Bola Tinubu filed a lawsuit against the 36 state governors in May for alleged misbehaviour in Local Government Area administration.
But Governor Soludo sees things differently.
“Funny enough, some people are arguing for the autonomy of local governments including some APC persons, which would take Nigeria back many decades from what a true federation is about,” he remarked.
Three federal entities are unheard of in any federal system in the world. In the American counties we imitated (democracy), the local administrations do not travel straight to the centre to collect money.
The authority to create the local government structure that each state desires must belong to them. Actual federalism is centred on that.
According to Soludo, sub-nationals should take on some of the duties included on the Exclusive List by the Federal Government.
“We need to fiddle with the federal and state governments’ fiscal authority, assigning the states between 60 and 65 percent of the revenues and allowing them to choose the local system to use.
“Why not combine the National Assembly into a single body with no more than five members from each state? No National Assembly that costs more than N300 billion a year to run is necessary. It is unnecessary, he declared.
The governor of Anambra conceded that the economic issues facing the nation were not caused by President Bola Tinubu. Rather, he thinks that since 1999, Nigeria has been suffering from the incompetent and inaction of governments.
“We are now suffering from delayed adjustments,” he added, adding that Tinubu has “the historic duty to mobilise Nigerians to clean up the mess for future generations.”
Nigeria has fiscal challenges and even issues with technical solvency. There is now so much debt that, while still highly expensive, there is limited room for additional borrowing. Nevertheless, the demands of the populace are growing geometrically every day.”
More money being printed will cause inflation to skyrocket, the governor cautioned.
We have to pull ourselves out of this jam, he declared.