By Ayodele Oni
Ondo state Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa has appealed to the committee on constitution amendment to recommend inclusion of newly created Local Council Development Authorities, (LCDAs) in the proposed constitution.
Welcoming members of the House of Representatives Committee to Akure, the state capital on Friday, Aiyedatiwa also pleaded that states should be allowed to have control over mineral deposits within their purview.
“It is also of interest to the Government and people of Ondo State that additional local governments be created in the State, just as Lagos State Local Development Council Areas (LCDAs) are being proposed for inclusion in the Constitution as fully-fledged Local Government Areas.
“In Ondo State, we have functional thirty three (33) LCDAs duly created by the State Government. We strongly advocate that the proposed bill be expanded and these 33 LCDAs in Ondo State be recognised as fully-fledged Local Governments in the First Schedule of the Constitution.
“Also, it is high time that Section 44(3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was amended to remove control over all minerals, mineral oils and natural gas in, under or upon any land or territorial waters in the exclusively economic zone in Nigeria from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List.
“It is an understatement that State Governments and the people experience a lot of agonies from the activities of miners, including illegal miners, quarries and others that engage in mineral exploration activities.
“This is because State Governments have little or no control over this sector. It hinders State Governments, especially oil-rich States from harnessing their mineral wealth for local development, while illegal mining continues to flourish due to weak Federal Government oversight and poor local enforcement mechanisms.
“For instance, Ondo State is richly endowed with solid minerals like limestone, granite, bitumen, kaolin and marble, yet many local quarry operators face bureaucratic bottlenecks in obtaining licences and permits from the Federal Government.
“It is, therefore, imperative to remove all extractive resources like quarrying, mines, oil fields, geological surveys from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Residual Legislative List.”
The governor stated that the State aligns with the progressive aspirations of the South-West Geo-political Zone in advocating for true federalism that reflects socio-political, cultural and economic realities of the federating units.
“This would be in tandem with true fiscal federalism where states have full control over their resources and revenues, while remitting about 40% of their revenues to the Federal Government.
“Still on fiscal federalism, it will serve the cause of fairness and justice to have a review of the current revenue allocation formula which is skewed in favour of the Federal Government. Ondo State is of the opinion that not less than 50 percent of revenue from the Federation should be allocated to the States.
“On State Police and internal security, it is sufficiently clear that the growing insecurity in the country has rendered the centralised policing structure unsustainable.
“The centralised police institution has tried its best, but it has become overwhelmed, underfunded and ill-equipped to solve evolving and diverse security challenges like kidnapping, banditry, terrorism, farmers-herders clashes, cultism and cybercrime.
“These crimes continue to thrive due to delayed response to crimes and lack of local intelligence on the part of the centralised policing architecture. We, therefore, call for the establishment of State Police to strengthen internal security.
“This position is further strengthened by the success story of the Amotekun Corps under the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN) which has significantly improved community policing, deterrence and intelligence gathering, in spite of being restrained from handling sophisticated weapons and lack of prosecuting powers.
“States are closer to the people and they better understand the local peculiarities of crimes and security threats.”
On the creation of additional states, the Governor maintained that “Ondo State is not opposed to the creation of new States as requested in some of the proposed bills, but the government and good people of Ondo State strongly oppose excising any part of our territory to merge with any new state or join an existing state.”
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