Anambra Governor Chukwuma Soludo kicks against any form of autonomy for local government areas

Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo on Wednesday threw his weight behind the growing calls for a single term for elected officeholders.

Still, he argued that any form of autonomy for local government areas in the country is against the tenets of true federalism.
The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) proposed a single-parliament National Assembly because of the country’s dwindling revenue.

Soludo, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2004 to 2009, spoke at The Platform Nigeria, a programme by Lagos-based church, Covenant Nation, to mark the 2024 Democracy Day.

The event with the theme, ‘Democracy and the Free Market Economy’ featured former Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola; the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan-Kukah; former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; among others.

“Sometimes, these conversations about single term might begin to make some sense so that you fix it, whether you say four years or five years, six years, seven years, single term,” Soludo said.

“So, you are not thinking about the next election once you finish getting into this. I face that all day in my state. You want to get into this (project), they say, ‘No, wait, you know you have an election’. And I say, ‘No, let’s get it, if we get there, we get there and if we lose, we lose.”
President Bola Tinubu has also supported the calls and in May the Federal Government sued the 36 state governors over alleged misconduct in the administration of Local Government Areas.

Governor Soludo, however, has a different view.
He said, “Funny enough, more recently, 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.

“There is no federal system in the world where you have three federal units. The counties in America where we copied (democracy), their local governments don’t go to the centre to collect money directly.

“Each state must have the power to design the kind of local government system they want. That is what true federalism is about.”

Soludo said the Federal Government should give some of the responsibilities in the Exclusive List to sub-nationals.