Former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, yesterday restated his call for devolution of more powers and revenues from the Federal Government to the state/regional governments, and said that every tier of government should be reasonably self-reliant in terms of revenue.
This was just as he stressed the need to ensure internal party democracy so “that the selection of candidates for elections to the local and other levels is carried out by generality of party members rather than a few godfathers”.
Speaking at a conference on Rediscovering the Local Government System in the Emerging Constitution organised by the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria{ALGON} at Nike Lake Hotel, Enugu, the ex-Vice President? said that though the Joint State-Local Government account was meant to acknowledge the rightful role of the federating states in the local government administration, the control that the state governments have over the joint account has ensured that the development objective of the direct allocation was not met.