The Nigeria Union of Government Employees (NULGE) has directed her members across the 774 local government in the country to vote out Governors who are against the actualisation for autonomy for Local Governments.
President of the union Comrade Ibrahim Khaleel who renew the call in Abuja yesterday said, Governors are ganging up with state legislators to frustrate the efforts of the the union for a free local government system.
Comrade Khaleel who was speaking ahead of the celebrate its 40th Anniversary today, fronwed that the state governors; under the Nigeria Governors Forum; ganged-up against the passage of Local Government autonomy Bill into law.
According to him, the Governors Forum was doing everything to truncate the people’s will concerning local government autonomy.
He said already a directive was given to all state presidents of the union to mobilize and sensitize all the local government workers and their families to work against the governors of their state in all the states that have refused to pass the bill.
Comrade Khaleel said only twelve states worked on the bill sent to them by the two Chambers of the National Assembly, adding that three out of the twelve voted against autonomy for Local Governments.
He, however, regretted that as soon as the Governors Forum realized that the states were passing the bill, they quickly intervened and summoned a meeting with Speakers of the state assemblies.
“Part of what we are expecting to achieve tomorrow by bringing our membership from all the 774 local governments under one roof, look at our journey so far, our challenges and the way forward certainly is to have a fresh mandate, fresh resolution and eject more energy into our struggle to see how we can engage politicians across the board on how to achieve this even before 2019 election and we believe strongly that this struggle is achievable because the bill is alive at the state Assembly.
“So what we need is strong push and more so that the bill that was transmitted along this bill that frees state Assembly from financial control of the state government are already being assented to by the President. So, the state Assembly are now free to decide and do their work as legislatures without much interference from the state governors.”